Is Survival Selfish or Smart?

By The Survivors Club Staff
January 29, 2010

We recommend this thoughtful, provocative essay by Lane Wallace of The Atlantic.

The essay begins: "In his just-released book The Last Train From Hiroshima, Charles Pellegrino quotes one of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts as saying that those who survived were, in general, those who looked after their own safety, instead of reaching out to help others. "Those of us who stayed where we were ... who took refuge in the hills behind the hospital when the fires began to spread and close in, happened to escape alive. In short, those who survived the bomb were ... in a greater or lesser degree selfish, self-centered--guided by instinct and not by civilization. And we know it, we who have survived." 

"But is survival really selfish and uncivilized? Or is it smart?" Wallace asks.  "And is going in to rescue others always heroic? Or is it sometimes just stupid? It's a complex question, because there are so many factors involved, and every survival situation is different."
 
Wallace concludes: "While we laud those who sacrifice themselves in an attempt to save another, there is a fine line between brave and foolish. There can also be a fine line between smart and selfish. And as a friend who's served in the military for 27 years says, the truth is, sometimes there's no line at all between the two.
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