Dying for something

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This is such a good question I want to be the one to answer it, although I'm sure there are others who would do a much better job. If I have no third option, then I would say Lion. He chose to defy the establishment, not stand for the injustice. Rather than live out his life with the dubious security that comes with giving in to tyrannical rule. I guess it depends on what you call a lion, too.

Actually, I never technically dodged your question so much as you never had one to begin with. Looks like much the same situation here.

So was Ghandi a man dreaming to be a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming to be a man? Is one bird in the hand worth two in the bush?

My point was that the idolization of grandstanding heroics is foolish. I mostly agree with CaptainTrips assessment of Gandhi. The issue is that Gandhi achieved great things not through posturing, not through talking big and looking for a fight, but by simply standing for what was right.

I still don't see your point. Different situations call for different solutions, often different people. Sand was asking a question, he indicated that he couldn't relate a certain psychological dynamic (self-sacrifice in the face of death), I was giving him my own account of what I've seen of it and how it works or why people can feel that life can be far less worth living than being dead if they make certain types of mistakes or fail at certain societal benchmarks. 'Its better to live one day as a lion than 500 as a lamb' is auxiliary, its an analogy, something that just demonstrates the overall feeling that a lot of people have regarding the idea of honor. I followed that right up with mentioning that not everyone thinks that way, not everyone needs to, just as much though people can't exactly be asked to give it up if its impressed into their internal makeup by life for various reasons - that's also just as absurd.

Comparing the 'lamb of God' to '500 days as a lamb' - bashing analogies together, utterly unrelated, needs no geometric proof, and as an honest comparison - Jesus would have felt the drive and did nothing with it if he'd lived 'as a lamb' in the sense of the saying. What Ghandi did as well, standing down the British, being a 'lamb' in the '500 days as a lamb' analogy would have been if he'd had that drive and simply said - no I can't do it. Are you at least satisfied that you understand the saying a bit better now?

I understand the saying, tech, I just don't really like it.

Parables and sayings usually have exceptions. Sometimes two sayings contradict. Two heads are better than one, but too many cooks spoil the broth. I can't think of others right now.

Lets say though, we all adopted the mentality that it's better to live your one given life as a lion- can every person in the world be a "lion" and still come together on a good note? Sometimes, isn't it more effective to be passive? Still, I'm not saying the rams and lions of the world are bad -I mean, this is a horrendous world and somebody has to fight the good fight and there's no way around it.

You might luck out in not having to deal with quite the same personality types that I do (or you may just be 6'8" - I've never seen you). Regardless though you still have women in the country. A lot of 'machisimo' or attitudes along those lines have to do with readily dealing with other people's worse traits (which they'll flout and even try to menace you with if you let them), not to mention that with respect to women the guy who doesn't stick up for himself usually finds himself quite lonely. I have no idea what your life is like in this regard though I would really venture to guess that you likely live by the same principle just in your own preferred wording.

I would agree that the willingness to die for a cause could well have roots in people’s evolved nature. It’s not too difficult to imagine situations where someone who lays down his life can be behaving adaptively in terms of genetic continuity, for example, if such behaviour results in saving his family or tribe. (As JBS Haldane put it, “I would give my life for two brothers or eight cousins”).

Of course, in some situations dying for a cause can be maladaptive, and this is probably more likely to be so when the cause a person becomes willing to die for moves away from biology and towards ideological abstractions (like freedom and equality). I suppose that’s one of the ironies of humankind: how the ability to reason can override natural instincts and lead to maladaptive behaviour.

AG, I think you covered this sort of thing on the “Egalitarianism” thread, although I half suspected you were being satirical. (I couldn’t really tell.)

I guess dying for one’s religious beliefs can be biologically adaptive in some cases, and biologically maladaptive in others. I guess religious belief must certainly help many a soldier face the possibility of death.
I must admit that the bravery that must be required of a soldier in battle is difficult for me to contemplate.



If (as you seem to imply) wars have not improved the quality of mankind (and I would probably agree, although the quality of mankind is of course difficult to measure), then this probably suggests the opposite of what you are assuming, i.e., it suggests that the people who fight in wars are some of the strongest and bravest among us, and that the destructiveness of modern warfare is such that strength and bravery is not enough to stop huge numbers of them being killed. (This would have been the case with the relatively recent world wars at least.)

It’s a sad fact of the modern world that useless politicians often have the power to send brave soldiers to their deaths while they stay in their nice warm offices, unlike in the old days when a king would lead his men into battle.

Would I die to protect the lives of my wife and children?
Yes, definitely.

If I was in a war would I be the one to say " Run and I will hold the enemy off as long as I can"
Probably.

The Bible says "Greater love hath no man than he should lay down his life for his friends"

We are all going to die. How many of us can make that death important and noble?

There is a big difference between fighting as well and as long as you can and committing obvious suicide.

Actually the greatest irony is that what it means to be human is maladaptive behavior, and that truth and humanity are opposed to each other. Human beings, as they see themselves, aren't just smart animals, but rather they are beings with things like "reason", "morality", who search for "order in the universe", and who have dreams of "utopia". The issue is that they are really chimp 2.0, the problem though is that the full recognition of this is "nihilism", something hard to make compatible with most of their functioning. People are instinctive Platonists in a world matching that of the sophists a lot more.

I'm very certain I would have been willing (not without fighting back and not for the want to die) to die in the efforts during the civil rights movement in the USA. Fellow humans in my society being treated like second class citizens is not logical to me based on my view of one of the purposes of being a part of one.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-Martin Luther King Jr.

I may have a bit of repulsion for MLK Jr for various reasons, however, that quote works quite well.

Expanding on that quote, for us to branch out elsewhere to stamp out injustice in its various forms, we need the country we live in to have this realized itself. Without that as a foundation where you live, it's obscene to fight elsewhere first.

Dying for something, while I would prefer to not has always made sense.

In "The Lucifer Principle" Howard Bloom explains how he believes that when Humans come together in any kind of sizeable community, a sort of uncoscious hive-mind-like state becomes active subconsciously, and makes the community act as an organism. There are no more individuals, just cells.

And like you mentioned, sometimes the organism sacrifices it's own cells. Which would manifest as martyrdom and some other forms of suicide/self-sacrifice.

At least that's how I understood his book. I'm not a scientist. But I think it makes sense.

That may work with cells but not with me. I am still very much an individual and my life is the most valuable thing I have.

I agree. You are, and it is.

We won't really know for sure what we're willing to die for until the time comes to put our lives on the line. It's then that we find out who we really are.