Collection 5: "Is Survival Selfish?" by Lane Wallace

The “women and children first” protocol of the Titanic may not be as strong a social stricture as it was a century ago.

But we still tend to laud those who risk or sacrifice themselves to save others in moments of danger or crisis and look less kindly on those who focus on saving themselves, instead.

My friend and I walked quickly and calmly outside, but to get any further, we had to push our way through a crowd of people who were staring, transfixed, at the column of smoke rising from the front of the station.

She got out of the plane and survived. Very few others in the plane, which was soon consumed by smoke and fire, did.

So why do survivors berate themselves for not adding to the loss by attempting the impossible?

On the one hand, we’re told to put our own oxygen masks on first, and not to jump in the water with a drowning victim. But then the people who ignore those edicts and survive to tell the tale are lauded as heroes.

In a famous mountain-climbing accident chronicled in the book and documentary Touching the Void, climber Simon Yates was attempting to rope his already-injured friend Joe Simpson down a mountain in bad weather when the belay went awry.

Who would dive into icy waters or onto subway tracks or disobey orders to make repeat trips onto a minefield to bring wounded to safety? Are they more civilized than the rest of us? More brave? More noble?

It sounds nice, but oddly enough, most of the people who perform such impulsive rescues say that they didn’t really think before acting.

If survival is an instinct, it seems to me that there must be something equally instinctive that drives us, sometimes, to run into danger instead of away from it.