Kill or Be Killed

So often it happens, it cannot be denied: people will turn against their own beliefs or morals in order to protect themselves. This innate nature of man, to protect one's own life and to survive, has been visible since the beginning. If confronted by conflict, people will attempt to save themselves even if it means taking the lives of another or many. It may be a small conflict with small repercussions, it may be a small conflict with great repercussions. Why do they "strive to survive"? And why can they consciously destroy someone else in order to prevail? The answers are not as obvious as one might imagine. Man has been considered a logical or rational animal, yet he tends to rationalize his own behavior during and after the act. The act itself is caused by fear of his demise and the narcissistic thought that he must survive over the conflict at hand. This behavior is rooted in the Terror Management theory.

The awarness man possesses of hiss own mortality is unique to the animal kingdom, yet the will to survive transcends all species. Therefore, man is capable of fearing his own demise and thusly will act against death in order to survive. This principle illustrates the Terror Management theory (deathreference.com).

In the 1950's, a draft forced young citizens of the US to go fight in the Vietnam war. There were over 350,000 casualties for the US and close to 2 million for the Vietnamese (fsmitha.com). Let's look at both sides:

The US soldier forcibly sent to armed conflict in Vietnam more than likely did not have any interest attached to the defeat of the North Vietnamese. But when engaged by the "enemy," he was quick to kill. Why? because his life was at stake. Ernest Becker's Denial of Death describe man's will to survive a "narcissistic" yet innate behavior. He mentions that people in combat tend to feel that their life is more important than those of their enemies, or even their own comrades, and so lose the moral guilt of murder if it means saving their own skin. Often this will to survive follows their causa sui, as Becker referred to it, or their need to live on and make a legacy to which their name can be attributed (informationphilosopher.com). In this way, they try to deny their own death. Becker argues that all men are constantly trying to deny his death.

On the flip side are the Vietnamese. They are convicted with the will of their race to prevail. When engaged by the US troops, they will fight to their death in order to allow the race to survive. This is a quite different reaction, but it is the same basic principles. The Veitnamese are very collectivist, working together to better the whole, as are many Asian cultures. The causa sui therefore of an individual in such a society would be to protect the whole of their society. They will use deadly force favoring their own causa sui, their own legacy, over that of the enemy. In both cases, the people involved are trying to create a lasting legacy to immortalize themselves, denying the reality or possibility of death.

Because man is trying to deny his own death by means of survival, when engaged by potent conflict, he may drop his moral code to defend himself. In 2007, Joe Horn, a Texas resident, shot and killed two burglers threatening his life and the posessions of his neighbors. He claimed right to use deadly force on the burglers because they threatened him on his own property. It was logically not necessary to take the lives of the two Columbian immigrants, yet Joe's own rationalization made it acceptable to himself (nytimes.com). Man is a very rational animal, capable of using logical progressions to solve problems, but so often the emotional aspect of man, the raw spontenatity of action, produces a rationalizing man (Becker). What ever the conflict may be, people tend to rationalize their actions of defense during and after the action takes place. This makes man potentially very dangerous.

These processes bubbling around in the core of man are paradoxical. Fear of death creates conflict between people, which produces more fear in accordance with the Terror Managment theory, and therefore more aggression and self defense. The cycle has repeated itself as consistantly as history itself.


Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press, 1973.

"Causa Sui." informationphilosopher.com. October 12, 2009. http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/causa_sui.html

"Shootings Test Limits of New Self-Defense Law." Nytimes.com. October 12, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13texas.html

"Terror management Theory." deathreference.com. October 12, 2009.
http://www.deathreference.com/Sy-Vi/Terror-Management-Theory.html

"The United States and Vietnam." fsmitha.com. October 12, 2009.
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch26.htm

The elderly limit the resources for the young

BLOG 2

Not many people want to die. Society, as a whole, tends to have this great overbearing need to live as long as possible. And if this means keeping someone alive as long as possible, regardless of the amount of resources, then so be it. This is normal and understandable since life is essential to living, but it isn’t logical. Society allows people to live longer in their elderly stages of deterioration. This topic is notable because older people are living longer; thus causing the younger side of society to suffer with the lack of resources.

Resources are limited; therefore once they are used they are gone. Doctors will spend a lot of time trying to treat or cure many diseases that mainly occur in elderly people. This will limit the amount of time, people, and resources spent of diseases that will help younger people, who still have a long life ahead of them. This is where it gets controversial: how can anyone just “LET” someone die whether they are old or young? The answer is to treat it like any other issue and way out the pros and cons. Pros: elderly man/woman lives a few more months. Cons: resources are depleted; therefore they cannot be used to save someone like a child.

History proves that Japan had a rapid increase in their life expectancy rate after World War II. Japan increased by a mean of 13.7 years. Males went up 13.5 years (from 50.1 to 63.6 years) and Females went up 13.8 years (from 54.0 to 67.8 years) between 1947 and 1955 (Sugiura). In one perspective this can be seen as great. Everyone wants to live longer. But in another perspective it is a negative attribution to society. With more people living longer comes the need to feed, and provide for them. Eventually the society will not be able to sustain them all and poverty will become the way of life. Life is meant to end; it is inevitable regardless of our desires. Prolonging the inevitable only brings pain and suffering to all.

TMT, or Terror Management Theory, explains the need and ability to keep people alive regardless of its negative effects on resources. TMT is the need of self-esteem and faith in a cultural worldview to protect our psychological structures from anxiety that results from the awareness that death is inevitable in order to promote self-preservation (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon). Those three men researched an extension of TMT called the dual-processed theory. This consists of proximal and distal distinct defense systems that deal with conscious and unconscious aspects of the problem of death. The proximal system defends against conscious thoughts and “entails of either active suppression of such thoughts or cognitive distortions that push the problem of death into the distant future in a seemingly rational manner.” The distal system defends against unconscious thoughts of death, “but defend against death by enabling the individual to construe himself or herself as a valuable participant in a meaningful universe,” (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon). Viewing the deaths of loved ones is something that is humanly difficult. It causes reality of the inevitability of death to set in. These thoughts bring about anxiety and fear, which is something that as human beings we are “programmed” to avoid.

The longer we try to erase the line between life and death, the longer we waste precious, valuable resources on something that is inevitable. The need to keep anxieties silenced, faith alive and death off of our minds is becoming a greater burden than what is best for our future. We take resources for granted and before we know it we wont have that luxury. It has been estimated that people use more Medicare in their final years of life, about 27% of Medicare’s $327 billion annual budget, than in any other time (Appleby). This data means that we are wasting valuable money (resources) on the elderly who will inevitable die do to age. Instead we could be using that money (resources) to cure cancer, eliminate children diseases, and create hope for people who can live a full life like the old man/woman had.

In conclusion, our medical wars come down to the fact that we need life, but we need resources more. Older people have had a long life. Young people deserve it too. We need to spend our resources wisely so that they last. Saving deteriorating people for a few more months at the expense of millions just isn’t worth it when we can redirect that money and create something to help a 9 year old walk and live a life. We can save a life-a long life- if we redirect most of our resources away from old people and toward younger people eager to live a life.

Work Cited

Appleby, Julie. “Debate surrounds end-of-life heath care costs.” USA Today. 10 Oct.

2006. Web. 6 Oct. 2009. <http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2006-10-18-end-of-life-costs_x.htm>

Pyszczynski, Tom; Jeff Greenberg; Sheldon Solomon. “A Dual-Process Model of

Defense Against Conscious and Unconscious Death-Related Thoughts An Extension of Terror Management Theory.” New York Psychological Review. Vol. 106, No. 4, 835-845. Web. 6 Oct. 2009. http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy430s2001/Pyszczynski%20T%20Dual%20process%20model.%20Psych%20Rev%201999.pdf

Sugiura, Yasuo; Ju, Young-Su; yasuoka, Junko; Jimba, Masamine. “Rapid Increase in

Japanese Life Expectancy After World War II.” 17 Sept. 2007. Web. 6 Oct. 2009.

<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/takemi/files/RP245.pdf>