Trope-a-Day: Martyrdom Culture

Martyrdom Culture: Strongly averted by the Empire, who as firm devotees of Living Forever is Awesome consider this sort of thing absolutely, completely, utterly idiotic. It may be better to die for your beliefs than to die in bed for nothing, but whenever not absolutely impossible, it’s a damn sight better to live for your beliefs, not to mention whatever else you may enjoy and wouldn’t be able to post mortem.

“I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country,” “Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die,” and all that.

Not, of course, universally averted – but smarter societies trend this way, especially if they come into conflict with the Imperials, who despite regretting the occasional necessity of this sort of thing, love their own lives rather more than yours should the two come into conflict.

And so, upon being told that so-and-so “love death more than you love life”, etc., and so they’ll win, or some similar damn silly notion, are more than happy to deliver their request in the form of a horde of warbots or simple old-fashioned saturation antimatter bombardment from a few hundred miles up. Thus denying the Martyrdom Culture’s members whatever satisfaction they might have gotten from their hypothetical glorious deaths, and providing one more exemplary demonstration of superior military philosophy.

So it goes.