Survival Selfish In An Ordinary Man By Paul Rusesabagina

It takes a lot to survive. Some say it's the fight-or-flight instinct, and others say it’s selfishness. In the East African state of Rwanda, in 1994, the Hutus killed 800,000 people in about three months. The people they killed were part of an ethnic group called Tutsis. Paul Rusesabagina lived during the mass murders and wrote about the horrors in his book An Ordinary Man. He saved as many people as he could. Survival isn’t selfish.

Some people will help others even if it gets them killed. In "Is Survival Selfish?" Lane Wallace states, “…most of the people who perform such impulsive rescues say that they didn’t really think before acting.” (Wallace, 12). And from the text, "An Ordinary Man" by Paul Rusesabagina, "I still don’t understand why those men in the militias didn’t just put a bullet in my head and execute every last person in the rooms upstairs but they didn’t." (Rusesabagina, 2). People will run into fires or dive into oceans to save people. If they were selfish, wouldn’t they walk away? Turn their back on the dying people and leave? No, they would put themselves in harm's way to aid someone.

"Some people hold it together in a crisis and some people fall apart. Some people might run away from danger one day, and toward it the next. We pick up a thousand cues in an instant of crisis and respond in ways that even surprise ourselves, sometimes.” (Wallace, 13). And from "An Ordinary Man", “…I stayed at my post and continued to do my job as manager when all other aspects of decent life vanished. I kept the Hotel Mille Collines open, even as the nation descended into chaos and eight hundred thousand people were butchered by their friends, neighbors, and countrymen.” (Rusesabagina, 2). Survival depends on if you're able to stay calm. It’s easier to help other people if you can keep yourself breathing. Survival isn’t selfish if you help other people by being