Soldier or Warrior?

The martial way has room for both warrior and soldier, yet the roles are fundamentally different.

A soldier acts as one who places their will and life below a cause, a lord, or a socially valuable objective.  This person, valuable as their purpose may be to others, does not walk the pure path of martial mastery.
The soldier will be trained only to the extent that they are useful to their master, and if their training makes them fit only to die at the whim of swordsman and rifleman after killing 10 of the enemy, so be it.  Therefore, a soldier does not train in self defense, but in the destruction of others.  A soldier is a glorified demolition technician who may or may not survive conflict.  This role is a compromise of the martial way, which seeks above all else choosing the manner of one's death and the resolution of conflict.  In practice however, this compromise is a necessity of those who must learn to work in organizations.  I will cover in a future post how to properly exemplify the values of a soldier.

The warrior, by stark contrast, is one who acts as their own master and servant.  They do not worship idolatry or respond to the emotional appeals of any would be master.  They go to war when and where they please with a resolute acceptance of death in achieving their own objectives.  In a fully unrestrained sense, the warrior can be an anonymous serial killer or professional criminal who kills to serve only themselves.  This would be the ideal egoist warrior, who seeks only to maximize their own fulfillment regardless of the needs of others.  In a fully enlightened or restrained sense, the warrior is an ideal pacifist who lives by the principle of non-initiation of force, attacking only those who threaten their choice of death, or disturb the warrior's peace with needless conflict.  This would be an example of the ideal libertarian warrior, who protects what is their own and respects that which belongs to others.  Musashi would constitute one such example of a fully enlightened warrior, who ultimately put away the sword in favor of the calligrapher's pen, and died in peaceful solitude.

The roles of soldier and warrior conform to the distinction between hard and soft martial arts, wherein the hard arts refer to the physical brutality and numb savagery of the ideal soldier who often does not choose the manner of their death (as exemplified by feudal samurai and knights), while the soft arts refer to the mental strength and resoluteness of the ideal warrior who chooses the manner of their death within limits (as exemplified by Musashi, Ip Man, and certain characters of Bruce Lee).  It is important to remember that a warrior can easily serve as a soldier should the need arise, yet a soldier cannot easily walk the path of a warrior without compromising the will of his master.  Therefore, one's choice of role is significant to successfully living the martial way.