Borrowed Battles and the Hunger for Higher Purpose

People need a mission. They need a reason to get out of bed, a hill to climb, something that demands effort and offers meaning in return. Something that makes them feel brave, part of something special, something important. If we don’t give people a mission—if families, communities, institutions, and leaders fail to provide one—someone else will. And lately, a lot of Americans are volunteering for fights that aren’t theirs, on behalf of people who aren’t them, for causes they’ll never have to live with the consequences of.

Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up for debate. But the trend itself is real, and it’s worth talking about.

For most of human history, purpose was unavoidable. Survival required it. You hunted or farmed, or you starved. You defended your village, or it burned. You raised your children well, or your lineage paid the price. There was no shortage of friction with reality, and reality enforced consequences ruthlessly. Purpose wasn’t something you searched for; it was something that hunted you down every morning.

Modern America is different. By historical standards, we live in a time of unprecedented comfort. Many Americans have full bellies, climate-controlled homes, endless entertainment, and technology that turns boredom into a minor inconvenience rather than a crisis. Leisure time is abundant. Disposable income exists at scale. Physical danger is rare for most people, and real deprivation is something they read about rather than experience.

Comfort is not a sin. But comfort without responsibility creates a vacuum. And human beings hate vacuums.

When people lack a personal mission—something that requires discipline, sacrifice, and accountability—they go shopping for one. If there’s no dragon at the gate, they’ll find one online. If there’s no enemy threatening their family or community, they’ll adopt one across an ocean. If their own life demands little of them, they’ll insert themselves into moral struggles that demand everything—at least emotionally, rhetorically, and digitally.

This is how borrowed battles are born.

We see it everywhere. People passionately fighting cultural, political, or social wars that will never materially affect their lives. People speaking with absolute certainty about conflicts they’ve never experienced, communities they don’t belong to, and consequences they won’t pay for. It’s not always malicious. Often, it’s driven by something more human: a hunger to matter.

There’s a reason military service, emergency response, and other mission-driven professions resonate so deeply with those who’ve served. A mission simplifies life. It strips away the noise. It answers the question, “Why does this matter?” with brutal clarity. The military doesn’t just give you a job; it gives you a purpose, a team, and a set of stakes that are unmistakably real.

When people don’t have that in civilian life, they try to recreate it in other ways.

Social media supercharges this instinct. It offers instant moral clarity, tribal belonging, and a sense of participation in something larger than yourself—without the inconvenience of real risk. You can fight all day from your couch, earn social approval from your tribe, and log off without blood on your hands or skin in the game. It feels like purpose, but it’s purpose without weight.

That doesn’t automatically make it worthless.

There is an argument that taking on fights beyond your immediate self is a moral good. Empathy doesn’t stop at borders. History is full of people who stood up for others when it wasn’t strictly “their problem,” and the world is better for it. Abolitionists, civil rights activists, and humanitarian advocates often acted on behalf of people outside their own experience. Sometimes borrowed battles are righteous ones.

The problem isn’t caring about others. The problem is when caring becomes a substitute for competence, responsibility, and self-governance.

When people outsource their sense of meaning to distant causes while neglecting their own families, communities, and personal obligations, something is broken. When outrage replaces action, and signaling replaces service, we confuse noise with impact. When there are no consequences for being wrong—no personal cost for bad ideas or reckless advocacy—people drift toward extremity because extremity feels meaningful.

Real missions impose constraints. They demand tradeoffs. They punish failure. Borrowed battles rarely do.

Another issue is scale. It’s easier to fight abstract evil than concrete problems. Fixing yourself is hard. Raising good kids is hard. Being a reliable spouse, neighbor, or coworker is hard. Those missions are unglamorous, slow, and largely invisible. There are no viral hashtags for personal discipline or quiet competence. So people look elsewhere—toward grand struggles where the enemy is obvious and the applause is loud.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s a coping mechanism.

There’s also a darker angle. If people don’t choose a mission, someone will choose one for them. Ideologies, movements, and political actors are very good at identifying purposeless populations and giving them something to fight for. The less rooted someone is in their own life, the easier they are to mobilize for someone else’s agenda. History is littered with examples of this, and none of them end well.

So is this trend good or bad?

It depends.

It’s good when people extend empathy without abandoning responsibility. It’s good when they support causes with humility, curiosity, and a willingness to listen rather than dominate. It’s good when concern for others grows out of a well-ordered personal life rather than compensating for its absence.

It’s bad when borrowed battles become identity replacements. It’s bad when people confuse moral passion with moral authority. It’s bad when they demand sacrifice from others while risking nothing themselves. And it’s especially bad when they ignore the missions right in front of them—missions that actually shape the world in tangible ways.

Purpose is not optional. Humans will find it one way or another. The question is whether we anchor it in reality or let it drift into abstraction.

Maybe the answer isn’t to discourage people from caring about distant fights, but to remind them that the most meaningful missions usually start close to home. Build something. Protect something. Be responsible for someone. Accept consequences. Carry weight.

Because if you don’t choose a mission grounded in your own life, someone else will hand you one—and they’ll be happy to use you while they’re at it.

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Charles served over 27 years in the US Army, which included seven combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with various Special Operations Forces units and two stints as an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He also completed operational tours in Egypt, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea and earned a Doctor of Business Administration from Temple University as well as a Master of Arts in International Relations from Yale University. He is the owner of The Havok Journal, and the views expressed herein are his own and do not reflect those of the US Government or any other person or entity.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.