Survival vs. High moral

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It is said that "All is fair in love and war". But is all fair in love and war?

In everyday life is lying fair if you just desire what you attempt to achieve enough?

This seems to be the dilemma of Survival vs. High moral.

If there were 5 persons extremely similar to yourself, and you only had the choice of dying and let the others survive, or let the others die but surviving yourself, what would you choose? It's most likely that neutral persons would choose that only you died instead of the 5 other persons.

I'd like to know what attitude people have when it comes to this dilemma. How high are people's moral when their continual survival is at stake?

Can you avoid giving up your moral standards if you want to survive in certain situations?

Do you consider someone picking one of the options at the top strong or evil? Both?

Last edited by qawer on 23 May 2013, 4:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I think the one that is more interesting/telling is:

You see a train about to hit a group of people. You can stop this from happening by pushing a single person in front of the train. What do you do?

You are right.

Don't people in principle pick these choices unconsciously all the time, but on a much lower scale?

For instance:

"I only get what I want if I lie, but I'll only keep my moral standards if I don't."

I'd push the person in front of the train (assuming I can't just jump in front of the train myself... in the example it's usually an extremely large person, much larger than you, so that you can't make this choice)... And then, most likely, deal with the PTSD and likely legal repercussions for years thereafter; I might even commit suicide eventually, because I'm prone to it and because I don't think I could live with myself. That's one of the worst possible situations anybody can ever be in--a situation where you can't save everybody; and, worse, you have to take direct action that hurts one person in order to avoid hurting others. Nobody comes out of that the same. Thankfully such situations are rare and in real life there are usually third options. It comes down to numbers because numbers is all you have on such short notice.... save one person or save two; you don't have time to think.

The original poll should have one more option: "I would let a cat die to save myself, but not a human." This is where I stand. I love cats, but cats are not aware of their own mortality in a way that humans are, and if I had to choose between me and a cat, I'd pick me.

If it were a single human, that'd be a tricky one--I'd probably try to help them, and I might endanger myself, but I'd try to find a third option. I've been through a few emergency training classes, and it's repeatedly drilled into you that you do NOT put yourself in danger trying to help somebody else, because if you do there will be two people to rescue instead of just one. So you try everything you can to get the other person out, without adding yourself to the casualty list; and if you can't, you get help. There are very few situations where you would be actually able to trade your life for somebody else's. I can plausibly see myself doing so, but not in a considered, rational way--probably just a choice made spur of the moment without thinking too much about the consequences; more like, "I'll think about how to get myself out after I've gotten this other person out," and then realizing I've gotten myself into more trouble than I expected. I don't like to admit it, but fear affects me pretty deeply, and if I think about it, I probably would just freeze, no matter how much I wanted to help. Plus, there's the cognitive aspect. Things just go too fast and I can't focus on multiple things at once, and if I'm focused on the other person I might simply not remember that my own situation could be dangerous too.

But all of these things are pretty rare, pretty speculative. I'm more likely to get hit by lightning than ever have to make that kind of choice, and for that I am very thankful. The prospect of either dying (probably violently) or having to watch somebody else die and then having to live with that, is a pretty horrible one. I would much rather die quietly in bed when I'm old and have had a little more time to figure out how the world works. I can only hope that it never happens to me, or that if it does, I manage to make the decision impulsively without having to exist in a state of absolute terror for too long.

Yes, they do. All the time. At least these smaller choices are easier... there's not so much pain or fear, not so much risk. If you choose between "Help my friend move" and "Spend this afternoon relaxing", you're just risking that you'll be tired tomorrow, or else that your friend will have to move alone and will be exhausted. The fair thing is to share the tiredness by helping him move, and it's an easier decision to make than taking a bullet for him (or something equally melodramatic) because, y'know, it's just an afternoon of work you're giving up and that's it. Plus you deepen your friendship.

Our best option, I think, is to build a world where it's easier to make those small-scale choices, and the large-scale ones aren't common. Stuff like proper emergency services, so people don't have to risk their lives when they aren't equipped to help somebody without danger to themselves. Enough resources to go around, so you don't have to worry about which people you can save. That's why we're working on artificial organs... there'll never be enough donated ones to go around and it just hurts to have to make a choice like "This seventy-year-old won't be put on the transplant list because this thirty-year-old has a greater chance of surviving the operation"... No matter how logical it is, it still hurts and we still hate it.

Mine isn't up there. I'd let any animal die to save myself, but not any human, unless they were saving my life or something.

Your logic is flawed. More people would die because you can't stop a train from hitting a group of people my making another person get hit. This doesn't even make sense.

I'm not sure I get what you mean, sorry.

They were not saving your life. It was 'simply' you or them surviving in this specific scenario.

I would not assume that throwing someone in front of the train would definitely save the other people, even if I could think that fast, so it would not occur to me to throw someone or myself in front of the train.
Besides, taking it upon myself to sacrifice one life to save more than one lives makes no sense to me because that one life is just as important as the others. It would not even be a consideration.

I'm not going to vote because I need more specifics but I think I'd let pretty much anyone die to save myself. My survival is first priority. The only way I could see myself saving them is if it's someone where I'd want to die if they weren't around any more. I don't believe in an afterlife. Once you die it's all over and I don't want that.

I don't know what to do about the cat one. My survival comes first but I'd feel guiltier if a cat died than a person.

"You see a train about to hit a group of people. You can stop this from happening by pushing a single person in front of the train. What do you do?"

What I usually do when there is no good or obvious choice in what to do, nothing. I don't want to go to prison and maybe I'd feel less bad about letting a bunch of people die (not even my fault) than I would about directly killing someone.

It's a specific ultimate scenario I've created: either you die, or some other people die. The question is how many people are you willing to sacrifice in order for you to survive? (given that these were extremely similar you, and therefore as likeable as yourself).

It's meant to answer the question: what's more important to you, survival (you survive) or high moral (the many persons survive).

If it was my choice out of the 10,000 died then I would be willing to sacrifice a few of them to save myself, UNLESS all of the other 10,000 people had some importance higher than mine (such as being in a room with 1,000 brain surgeons,1,000 Successful scientist, ect...)

If they are people I don't even know then I don't care. My survival is more important. I'd rather be alive than a dead hero that saved a bunch of people.

You'd be alive knowing that you're responsible, or partly responsible, for a thousand deaths. That's no kind of life. I'm thinking here of soldiers who returned from Vietnam, having killed civilians... That is the single greatest risk for severe, often life-long, post-traumatic illness. (Those who killed other soldiers are less vulnerable, perhaps because in a war, soldiers all "agree" to take the risk that the other side will kill them, which helps mitigate the guilt to some degree, but even killing another soldier sharply increases the risk.) I can't really blame them because I don't know them and I don't know what it was like, and really it's the larger tragedy of war that put them in that situation in the first place...

But when I think about that, I wonder: Would life be worth living after you had committed some kind of atrocity in order to survive? And my answer is, Probably not. PTSD is one thing--I've been there, done that--but if the traumatic event involved something you know you could have prevented, not just survivor's guilt or "I could have been smarter" but something you actually took an active part in, willingly... I guess it's possible to recover and regain some kind of happiness afterward, but I keep thinking that I just wouldn't want to. It wouldn't be worth it. It'd be like... oh, I don't know, like a guy who has end-stage cancer, who doesn't want further treatment that'll gain him another two weeks of life, because they'll just be painful, semi-conscious weeks that he can't do much with.

I don't know whether I'd choose the other person or myself, but I do know that I wouldn't be very happy afterwards. If we can feel so horrible after merely insulting someone accidentally, what would we feel if somebody died because of our actions? I don't ever want to find out. And a thousand people... No. The horror of that, having to live with that....

I think we owe it to ourselves to find ways for everybody to benefit. People are fallible and we don't always do the thing that benefits the most people, maybe because we're stupid or scared or just don't see that it can be done. We can't depend on ourselves to be heroic; therefore we've got to use our ingenuity to create a world where people naturally help each other, long before drastic actions have to be taken. And maybe, in the meanwhile, if we get so used to doing small things for one another that we don't think about it, it will be automatic if we ever have to do anything big, and we'll be able to act before our self-preservation instinct gets a chance to turn us into selfish bastards.

Last edited by Callista on 23 May 2013, 7:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If I don't know them, I don't care.

(It'd be that lack of empathy thingy.)

Now, I'd die to save my mother or someone else I know and love.

Last edited by Dillogic on 23 May 2013, 7:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

But they're people. Why do you have to know somebody to care about them?

I'm honestly asking here. I know that NTs have to kind of mirror each other to feel connected, but we don't. Or, anyway, I don't. Why is it that knowing somebody would make you care about them more?

I don't feel anything for people I don't know, the same with animals.

Now, if there's an emotional connection there which is built from knowing someone or an animal, then I feel and care.

No idea "why", other than just having the attachment there.