What is the difference between a warrior and a soldier or ruffian or other type of fighter?  Briefly: a warrior is one who can explain why he fights, beyond simply, “I was so ordered.”  A warrior can speak to his own motivation from principle.  Philosophy is a necessary ingredient of warriorship.  To be a warrior, one must be both a martial artist and a philosopher.

To be a warrior is not necessarily to be good, nor is it necessarily better to be a warrior than not to be a warrior.  Your philosophy may or may not lead you to superior morality.  Most warriors in history have been morally mixed or moral only according to the measures of their culture during their era.  Your warriorship may encourage in you certain virtues (perseverance, discipline, strength), but plenty of evil men have exhibited virtues along with their atrocity.  To claim that being a warrior makes you a better man, you must have a definition of “good,” and your warrior’s philosophy must lead you only toward that good and its attendant virtues.  That still only gets you to a claim.  If your definition of “good” is wrong, or if you are incorrect in asserting that your warrior’s philosophy directs you only toward the good, then your claim is false.  Being a warrior, as you have defined warriorship for yourself, has not made you a better person.

While we’re at it: there have been in history almost no “warrior societies.”  There have been societies which included and celebrated their warrior caste, but in most of those societies the warrior caste constituted a miniscule percentage of the population and was guilty of as much atrocity as virtue.