“Romanticism of men” is nature itself. Woman can also live up to this, by say protecting children with her life.
Is it really that hard to see?
It’s true not all people would put their children before themselves, but evidently, the ones that don’t are just byproducts of evolution. It’s logically impossible for that trait to become dominant.
I just realized, all societies that purely let their children do their fighting, decay.
Iran/Syria is the most prominent example, number one kiddie suiciderbombers in the world.
See how that works for them.
Europe is very bad as well, since WWI, it has thrown so many children away for its own survival that it has lost its edge.
Nations with a lot of adults in combat that fight for their children would be the most powerful.
Demographically its also the most sensible thing to do, and experienced men would really fare better on the battlefield.
Yes, it is.
That romanticism, that wish to be eternal through heroic contributions, belongs in its own dedicated thread. Stop taking your survival into a completely different context. Stop it I say! I get what you’re advocating for Jakob and I have not disagreed with you.
Survive in what way? Survival of what?
Your self, MA, in part or whole, the physical, mental, spiritual. 
The forks are on stand-by for your be specific routine.
I just now noticed this thread.
Yes, JSS got it right. Survival of what? Usually when we say survival, we mean survival of a particular organism, immediate biological survival. Another form of survival would be the survival of your biological offspring, also biological but more long-term. In this sense, no, I would not do anything to survive, or to ensure the survival of my offspring.
I propose a following thought experiment against the idea that biological survival matters the most: Say a war happens and your group is enslaved by the enemy group. You survive and not only are you permitted to reproduce, but the enemy uses you as a breeder to make as many children as possible because the group that captured you needs slaves. So you survive and make lots of children, and these children continue to propagate your genetic material and make a lot of children too, but they are all slaves. They have no freedom to do what they want to do and live life. And they are never set free or in a position to free themselves.
So no, I do not consider life at all costs as worth living, and I would not do anything to survive.
But the other extreme, that of making absolutely no concessions and to not be willing to do anything contrary to your most idealistic principles in order to survive is no good either.
Now let’s think of survival beyond the biological.
As JSS said, survival is a matter of identity, what is it that one identifies with and wants to survive? Even in animals there are known examples when a close “friend” of their dies, either another animal or a human, the animal can get visibly depressed and stop eating, ceasing to care about its own survival. Of course, this is only the case in more intelligent mammals, I doubt a snake or an insect can mourn anything. So if I identify strongly with X, then if X is no longer, it would be as if a part of myself died and there is not much left to fight and struggle for. This X doesn’t necessarily have to be another organism, it can also be a principle. Say one is an aware human who knows what things like pedophilia and beastiality are, and what they entail, and the kind of psychological scarring that results from engaging in such behaviors. Such a human may then strongly identify with being a non-pedophile and non-zoophile. So to engage in beastiality or child rape in order to survive on a base, biological level would go contrary to the survival of his identity/self as a non-zoophile and non-pedophile on a rational, higher level. Then it comes down to what kind of survival one values more. I suppose this is why it’s sometimes said that people who do the most abhorrent things to survive and have no principles aside from survival are “dead inside”, that there is “nothing human” left in them, because indeed they reduce themselves to something lower than human.
A lowly animal that has no sense of self except the base, instinctive, and biological, will know nothing else.
More evolved animals, like dogs, can think a little beyond that.
Humans then go even further.
Autsider wrote
Interesting that you’d rather not survive particularly in light of your support for white sharia. Doesn’t your white sharia propose the very element of slavedom that you disdain here or don’t you see the correlation?
Yeah, I predict you may connect this to my authoritarianism and try to expose the “hypocrisy”.
And my answer is, nah, it’s not the same. Unless you consider all domination slavery, but then since domination is inevitable whenever 2 or more organisms interact, slavery would just be unavoidable.
White Shariah is just a healthy, nature-based hierarchy. I’d say what you’re arguing is the other extreme I mentioned, wanting to be free to be degenerate at all costs and not willing to make any compromises to survive.
It’s no better, in fact, I’d argue it’s even worse than wanting to survive at all costs, since natural selection selects leans more towards absolute survival than absolute degeneracy or absolute freedom.
Oh, now I have the option to compromise, I see until white sharia takes effect, then I’m a slave. What’s the difference between domination and leadership?
Hey, I’m not the one who pumps and dumps filthy whores like a degenerate. Oh, I forgot…men have needs to survive…as degenerates at all costs.
Leadership is a type of domination. White Shariah wouldn’t enslave women, but since you so insist on being a slave, we’ll make an exception for you and you’ll get to experience what being a slave actually is so that you stop your bullshit of calling slavery anything that isn’t absolute freedom for women (ensured by daddy state’s threats of violence, of course).
If you’re good looking you even get the privilege of being my personal slave for me to use as I please.
Your rebuttals are weak. Yeah, I’ve been foe’d.
I would like to say that no I wouldn’t, that certain thing would just be too unethical for me to do in order to survive, but I’m afraid that I can’t possibly answer this question honestly while in the comfort of my air conditioned home.
However, I do have a hint that there are certain thing I probably wouldn’t do. These come from dreams. Just recently I had a dream where I was captured by ISIS and they were slaughtering innocents left and right. I could do something to not be killed, however. If I myself became the executioner I could save my life. I looked at the gruesomeness of what was going on and couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I attempted to escape.
So, at the very least I passed the virtual reality test when it comes to this sort of thing. But real life is a bit different, so who knows.
WendyDarling
We might wrestle with the question but where it is a question of “conflicted goods” can we actually know what we would do under certain circumstances? We might want to believe that we would know. We might have what we consider to be the best intentions - who doesn’t want to be a hero? - but until that moment, how could we answer that question?
I might, depending on the circumstances. That’s not an easy question to answer.
There is to survive Death and there is to survive daily in a bleak, cruel world.
Can we judge what another would or would not do considering the fact that our journeys are different, we come from different places?
Fontyne, the character in Les Mes, became a prostitute in order to survive (for her child) but especially her child to survive.
But it wouldn’t be a question of succumbing would it? Succumbing to me connotes something out of our control.
But what if you had small children? Could your decision be so honorable if your death contributed to a terrible future life of those children?
I do know what you mean by honorable death though.
If someone had the chance to allow their self to die in order to save many people but they couldn’t do it, they just couldn’t rise to the occasion, would they be considered to be a coward? Not everyone could be a hero.
I don’t think that it is simply a question of conscience. It is also a question of Will.
William James said the greatest use of life is to spend it for that which will outlast it.
How could we know what would better serve that - our continued existence or our decision which really is not that much of a decision in the final analysis. Most heroes often do not take the time to think things out before they leap into nothingness.
To oneself, the curse of being a coward would rob one’s life of its value, one’s will to live, rather than just to survive with an empty smile in the vacuum of one’s soul. A soul who takes more than it gives lives a coward’s life, objectively.
I personally would not necessarily call that individual a coward. We are not all meant to be heroes, Wendy though we would like to romanticize our lives and our identities. We answer to different drummers. Perhaps that person serves in another way which is just as important/necessary and meaningful.
There are people who are not capable of transcending that Will, that instinct to survive.
Wouldn’t you first need to know that person’s personal journey, their beginnings? How can you know that what that person has been given in life is not far less than what would appear to be?
Are heroes born naturally or are they formed from the fire of life?
You would not be the one to call them a coward, they would call themselves that…silently. People’s judgments never become more condemning than our own against ourselves.
Perhaps there are two types of will, the animal will to survive at all costs, and the transcendent will of a being who surpasses the animal, a selfless being who recognizes the importance of potential in all life…or that strong desire could be a part of one’s essence that we are in fact born with which some tap into while others ignore. Being selfish, withholding, is easier than sharing our blessings.
I’d guess that 90% of all people would do anything to survive, the first time put to the test, then that number would start to fall, the repeat offenders of the 90% would become fewer and fewer if retested.