Odilious128

It's the same as the American military today, for the most part. Young people, usually males, without any hope of a decent future join up to make something of themselves. Travel the world, make money, do cool shit. That's a dream for a poor boy with no future. So you do it, but by the time the bullets start flying you just try to protect your buddies and hope for the best. You demonize the enemy and then you don't have to justify anything. You just do what you're told and try to survive it so you can get that future you were looking forward to.

It's not good or bad, is simply survival for those that don't have other means. Mostly at least...there are of course exceptions. But I want to mention this: is the exact same thing for most of the young men that join radical terrorist groups. They don't start off wanting to kill everyone...they start off hungry, afraid, and hopeless. So then someone gives them food and hope and the power to take what they want, and of course they snatched that opportunity. It's no different than the poor boys joining the American military. You try to demonize the enemy so you don't feel bad about killing them, but if you look closely you'll see they're just like you but on the other side of the fight. They're just people, like all the rest of us.

They can travel light years in the blink of an eye, but they can't handle the evil liberal plot to destroy earth extremely slowly. Makes sense if you don't think about it.

I just want to say that i absolutely loved your book. It was very inspiring. I bought it to try to develop a love for math, but i ended up being much more interested in your personal struggles to study math in Russia. Would you say that those early days really developed your drive to excel? If it was me, probably half my drive would be to spite those that said i couldn't. Or was it purely for your love of math?