An excerpt from a post I made on reddit.
The Geneva Convention is a set of rules put together by a group of world leaders. These rules were put in place to regulate the practice of war. War arises for many reasons, but is ultimately a method of settling dispute. You do not take turns. You do not have time outs. The purpose of war is to murder enough people that the remainder either begins agreeing with you or is rendered incapable of or unwilling to disagree with you.
The concept of war, while not applauded, is not considered something that ought to be completely forbidden.
If a group, such as a nation, believes themselves to possess lands settled by another, or believes another group ought to be destroyed for having incompatible beliefs, they may do war to them. They will go to these other people and make them dead until they adhere to the belief system endorsed by the first party.
Once again, this is not considered something strictly bad.
If a group believes they are beholden to rules which they should not be, they will do war to those asserting these rules. They will go to these other people and make them dead until the rules are no longer in effect.
This, too, is considered the gist of war, and there is nothing outrageous about it.
However, there are times in war where a party might do things that another party does not approve of.
I will stress at this point that the act of going to another party and making this party dead until they comply with demands is NOT one of these things. Consent to being killed for something you disagree with is implied to always be… agreed with.
The world leaders (in the form of the Geneva Convention) established rules forbidding things they disagreed with.
I must now remind you that we have already established that ‘things disagreed with’ and ‘rules’ are both valid and accepted cause for going to a disagreeing party and making them dead until they agree.
These rules are rules you have to follow, even if you don’t agree with them.
Reminder: You don’t have to obey any rules if you are able to kill or repel the enforcers. Reminder: killing is okay.
If you fail to obey these rules, you will be subject to sanctions and trade embargoes.
Reminder: We are discussing the massive orchestration of enormous groups of strangers killing each other.
The reason for the rules is as such: no one wants to get killed in this specific way, why don’t we all just… not do it?
REMINDER: NO ONE WANTS TO GET KILLED IN THE OTHER WAYS EITHER.
This was all said and done while all parties agreed, though, that an attempt to use similar measures to prevent war would be infeasible.
The Geneva Convention is a set of rules on how to kill people right. It forbids really bad things. It endorses really bad things. It is a guidebook for mayhem. Instructions for orderly implementation of anarchy. It has purpose, it has sanity. It is a monument to the tremendous amounts of insanity humanity had to feel that writing it was necessary.
The fact that this is almost completely unappreciated in this thread terrifies me.