Would survival be selfish if you were put into a situation like the holocaust? When death camps and gas chambers were all you could see? Or would surviving that dangerous horror filled time be a miracle in its place? Because surviving a situation that you have been put in, you might only be able to see getting out of it. Survival doesn’t require selfishness if your life is at risk as well as others, if you are really struggling and doing everything in your will power to survive. If you are in any of these situations would helping someone else be worth risking your life for?
Survival is not selfish if your own life is at risk in the process of saving others. In Elie Wiesel’s book “Night”, he talks about his experience marching. He explains …show more content…
If someone had fell even for a second they would be shot to death. If you would have helped the man get up you might have been shot as well. Putting your life and someone else’s life on the line is not worth risking. One death is better than two. Another example of this is in the collection textbook “Is Survival Selfish” two men were climbing a mountain. “Simpson ended up hanging off a cliff, unable to climb up, and Yates, unable to lift him up and losing his own grip on the mountain, ended up cutting the rope to Simpson to save himself” (Wallace 23). Yates didn’t know what to do because the alternate would have risked both of their led to both of their deaths in attempt to saving both of them. In another story “The 1972 Andes Flight Disaster” rescuers were trying to find the survivors, but soon gave …show more content…
A great example of going into extreme measures would be in “The 1972 Andes Flight Disaster” a plane crashed and they had to go into desperate measures to find food to live and survive. “At high altitude, the body’s caloric needs are astronomical... we were starving in earnest, with no hope of finding food, but our hunger soon grew so ravenous that we searched anyway... again and again we scoured the fuselage in search of crumbs and morsels. We tried to eat strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they’d been treated with would do us more harm than good” (Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado). They could not find any food. They resulted to eating cushions to ice and plastic, but they couldn’t eat it all. They soon resulted into cannibalism after a while. They were so desperate for any source of food they could find that they resulted in eating their friends. This is not selfish because the survivors did what they could to survive. Another example of this is In the collection textbook “Is Survival Selfish” there is a story about the titanic and Bruce Ismay’s survival. “Ismay was savaged by the media and the general public for climbing into a lifeboat and saving himself when there were other women and children still on board” (Wallace 21). Is this really selfish though. He was doing what he could to
Survival is not selfish if your own life is at risk in the process of saving others. In Elie Wiesel’s book “Night”, he talks about his experience marching. He explains …show more content…
If someone had fell even for a second they would be shot to death. If you would have helped the man get up you might have been shot as well. Putting your life and someone else’s life on the line is not worth risking. One death is better than two. Another example of this is in the collection textbook “Is Survival Selfish” two men were climbing a mountain. “Simpson ended up hanging off a cliff, unable to climb up, and Yates, unable to lift him up and losing his own grip on the mountain, ended up cutting the rope to Simpson to save himself” (Wallace 23). Yates didn’t know what to do because the alternate would have risked both of their led to both of their deaths in attempt to saving both of them. In another story “The 1972 Andes Flight Disaster” rescuers were trying to find the survivors, but soon gave …show more content…
A great example of going into extreme measures would be in “The 1972 Andes Flight Disaster” a plane crashed and they had to go into desperate measures to find food to live and survive. “At high altitude, the body’s caloric needs are astronomical... we were starving in earnest, with no hope of finding food, but our hunger soon grew so ravenous that we searched anyway... again and again we scoured the fuselage in search of crumbs and morsels. We tried to eat strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they’d been treated with would do us more harm than good” (Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado). They could not find any food. They resulted to eating cushions to ice and plastic, but they couldn’t eat it all. They soon resulted into cannibalism after a while. They were so desperate for any source of food they could find that they resulted in eating their friends. This is not selfish because the survivors did what they could to survive. Another example of this is In the collection textbook “Is Survival Selfish” there is a story about the titanic and Bruce Ismay’s survival. “Ismay was savaged by the media and the general public for climbing into a lifeboat and saving himself when there were other women and children still on board” (Wallace 21). Is this really selfish though. He was doing what he could to