Well at least in one of the Patton movies he said something like “You don’t win wars by dying for your country you win them by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his.” Yeah we honor soldiers who were killed or wounded in war but most of the medals we hand out have to do with their acomplishments not their wounds. A guy who loses both legs will get a purple heart. A guy who loses both legs but still manages to take out that enemy machine gun nest might get a medal of honor.
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As you say they “risk” their lives they don’t readily go forward to die. In fact if the situation is to dangerous a firefighter will not risk himself or the lives of other firefighters to make a rescue.
I don’t know if anything is worth dying for. I could certainly see risking death but I can’t see just saying “ok, I’ll die for that.”
It would be different for a lot of people. I wouldn’t die for my country, queen or god [if I believed in one]. I might leap in front of a fast moving vehicle to save Scylla, if I liked him [her?] well enough.
Of course I’d die to save one of my kids. I’m 57 and they’re under 16, so it’s not as big a sacrifice as others, perhaps.
There was also that cassoulet that I had in a French restaurant in the lower '80’s in Manhatten about 17 years ago. They only had two servings left, and there were six of us. Being that lucky, I could probably die happy.
Once while in the Army and bored, I read through the list of people that had recently (at that time–in the early 70’s) been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. A surprising number of them were for jumping on top of a hand grenade and thereby saving his buddies while sacrificing himself.
What would I die for? Family and country, easily. And probably for some heroic effort that wasn’t necessary but still cased my death because I recklessly acted when I should’ve thought about it a bit longer first.
Certainly not. On some level I don’t think I really “believe” in America as something to protect or be offended on behalf of. When 9/11 happened it horrified me as an attack on human beings, not ‘my country’.
I don’t have any children, but I think I would. I don’t think that’s exceptionally heroic; first, because biology drives us to it and secondly because love does as well. This, I think, applies to spouses, family etc.
As for other people’s children… I think so, because I doubt if I could go on living without my sense of moral decency intact- that is, without the inner voice that affirms, “You are ok, you are a good person, you wouldn’t let children die.”
With a gun to my head? Yes. This person is clearly insane, he’s quite likely to shoot me anyway. Why give him the satisfaction? The gun to someone else’s head is trickier. I’m not evangelical, so I wouldn’t die to advance the faith under any circumstances.
Perhaps. The sense of moral decency again. Even people who believe in Hell will do immoral things, and I think that’s because humans tend to place the boundary between hellbound and not as being right beneath them on the list. Despite some low self-esteem, I think I am basically good, but I don’t think that feeling would survive letting someone else die for me. Then I’d end up killing myself, rendering the whole thing depressingly pointless.
I think that, if afterwards you were alive, but you wish you weren’t, you’ve made the wrong choice, essentially.
