Survival Essay: Is Survival Selfish?

Another thing people will do in order to survive is they will kill you or harm you.

In life failure is synonymous with death, you don’t know when it will happen, how it will happen, but one thing you can be sure of it will happen. I remember learning how to ride a bike I consider myself a good rider one thing I don’t remember is how many times I fell in attempt to trying to learn how to ride. When I received the news that I was being dismissed from law school I was devastated. Being admitted to law school was one of my biggest accomplishments and also one of my biggest failures. In every failure there are lessons I learned three life changing lessons sitting out a year of law school. The first lesson I learned is patience in the plan. The second is a patience in the process. The third is to fail forward.

September 11, 2001, four aircrafts were hijacked and two of them were crashed into the twin towers. Throughout the chaos and burning fires from above, there were still many people who spent countless effort in making sure they got out of the towers. However, among these people were also those who saved others. The selflessness of the many people on 9/11 is one of the reasons for all of the survivors from this event. This act of selflessness is also defined as altruism. This act of heroism throughout chaotic events has been a topic of controversy for decades. The controversy is as to whether the act of altruism is a human trait that people have, being motivated by empathy or if there is a self-serving benefit to every act of altruism, being

Humans have been the dominant species for many years and over the course of history, human nature has never been fully understood due to the fact that there are major differences between how we function in the world compare to other species and we are still learning from it. Human nature is defined as the ability to think, feel, and act in this world (Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, n.d.). Humans are selfish individuals because no matter how much they act; they want to fulfill their own interest. We blame nature for our problems because other actions, not necessarily our own, control us but in reality it is our own decisions that caused these actions.

During the apocalypse people need help. While many people could try to provide assistance with various tasks, there are some who are more qualified than others. These qualified personnel have been trained to do vital jobs. Jobs related to science would be especially helpful. Helpful people in these science-oriented jobs are medical professionals, astrophysicists, engineers, agricultural scientists, botanists, and geneticists.

Look at a tree. What does it look like? It has branches, and leaves and a trunk, right? Now, think about one’s life. It also has branches and leaves and a trunk. The branches of one’s life are the events that happen in it. All of the events that give someone choices. The leaves are one’s choices. There is always another leaf, another choice. There is always the right leaf and the wrong leaf. Then, the trunk is one’s self. It holds all of one’s choices, good or bad. It holds all of the events one has experienced, good or bad. Life is full of choices. It is important to know that. For one to live their life to the fullest, they can focus on the positive. Someone can accept change, in one’s self and others around them.

Thesis: As this classic work shows, adversity can bring out the worst in the human spirit.

Another thing people will do to stay alive is steal. A real life example is when some people will steal food from grocery stores to survive. They reach a point where they are so desperate that they must steal to survive.

Abortion is a currently very controversial issue in America, with a recent survey of over 1,000 people identifying that 47% were pro-choice, while 46% were pro-life (“U.S. Still Split”). With such an equal split, many people find themselves disagreeing with others, and are desperate for a decision on the issue that is congruous with their own opinion. The dystopian novel Unwind, by Neal Shusterman, takes place in a future where the debate went so far as to spark a civil war, which was eventually mediated with compromise: children must be allowed to live to the age of thirteen, at which point the parent or guardian, until the child turns eighteen, may choose “unwinding”, a euphemism for a surgery in which the body is kept alive and split up so that the parts can be transplanted. This led to many runaways trying to escape the procedure, overcrowded orphanages full of children who were required to be born despite parents with no intention of keeping them, and even “storking”, where a newborn can be left on a doorstep by the mother, legally forcing the new family to take care of it. However, there were also various benefits: teens who would

It is our instinct to protect ourselves before we do anything. This notion is put to test in the article “Fight, Flight, or Freeze? The

evaluating options, one expressly chooses not to weigh into the potential consequences for oneself. Lengbeyer clarifies the meaning of deliberate selfless through the following example:

Throughout our lives, we are faced with difficult situations, and possibly even life or death situations. As humans, our instinct is to take these difficult situations and find the best way to get over them. Sometimes these situations and predicaments get so difficulty that there is no way out of it. When this happens, people will do things that they would never dream of doing in order to survive. In history, we can see many incidents where people have gone to extremes just to survive these difficulty situations, such as; the people of the Donner Party, those associated with the Andes Flight Disaster, and the crew members of the Luxborough Galley. In Jose Saramago’s Blindness, we see characters in the book have to make difficult decisions during life or death situations, such as guards killing blind people in hopes of not contracting the blindness, blind citizens stealing goods from stores and even people preaching

The body has an automatic response to stress from a perceived threat, whether the threat is mentally or physically. This reaction is called the fight or flight response. The moment our bodies sense the danger, it kicks in. The adrenal glands release adrenaline, causing breathing and heartrate to speed up and blood pressure to rise. Digestion stops and the extra blood flow is redirected towards the muscles to give them the extra energy the body needs as it prepares to either fight or flee. For example, your walking down a dark street alone at night, when a man with a knife runs up and tells you to hand over your wallet. Your body’s fight or flight response kicks in and you have three choices. Give him your wallet, try to fight him off, or flee.

Many people may argue that selfishness is an unjust morality, due to the popular belief that “man exists in order to serve others” (Rand, 146). I, however, regard selfishness to be a quality that is crucial to every person’s being. When there is no selfishness, individuals become engaged in altruism. I believe that altruism is ultimately distracting from the individual’s sense of self. One should not worry themselves with the difficulties of others, for they shall become engulfed in those difficulties, themselves. It is my belief that “man’s first duty is to himself” (Rand, 147). His actions must reflect his own desires and selfishness, not the desires of those around him. Without selfishness, individuals do “not think, judge, feel, or act”

Timothy’s plan for survival is correct because he is inspiring Phillip to do things being blind because he needs help because he is starting to lose his strength. He is trying to to get Phillip to get used to being on the island and helping him get used to the fact that he is blind and how to work when he is blind. He wants Phillip to learn how to do things on the island when he is blind. For survival Timothy and Phillip will have to have these three things food water, shelter and a fire to keep warm. They will need to do all of these to survive on the island and so they will not die or get really sick.