Of the many sagas of self-sacrifice that have emerged from the attack on America last week, two are especially intriguing:
Why did passengers on at least one airplane challenge their hijackers, knowing that to do so probably would get some of them killed?
And why did firefighters, who intimately know that structural steel will collapse when exposed to intense heat, trudge up stairwells of the World Trade Center after an airliner hit it with the explosive power of a cruise missile?
In each case, humans programmed to protect their own lives above all else instead decided to place themselves in situations that were almost predictably deadly.
What’s truly extraordinary is how ordinary this reaction can be. In World War I, soldiers climbed out of trenches and into hails of enemy bullets with no more provocation than a shouted, “Over the top!” In World War II, during the D-Day assault on Normandy, the rational choice would have been to huddle at the base of cliffs, not climb them.
Closer to home, Chicago firefighters respond to almost 200,000 calls a year–about 5,000 of which, or more than 10 a day, involve burning structures, from one-stall garages to massive warehouses of toxic chemicals.
And while attention on police officers here often focuses on those accused of mistreating citizens, two have been slain while on duty this summer, and another clings to life with severe gunshot wounds. Through July, according to the Chicago Police Department, 878 cops had been victims of battery.
Why do people put themselves anywhere near death’s path?
The basic answer is a heartening one for a time when evil seems ascendant. “All of us, whether we are janitors or presidents, want to believe we are connected with others,” says Mort Silverman, a University of Chicago professor of psychiatry who has explored why people take, or risk, their lives. “The knowledge that we’ve helped someone else, gotten them through a trauma, is one of the driving forces–and sources of accomplishment–in our lives.”
That, says Silverman, explains a theme common to the reported telephone conversations between passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which later crashed in Pennsylvania, and relatives on the ground: “Facing danger, people rose to a higher level.”
We are hard-wired, then, to react out of our sense of community, or of camaraderie, or of sheer obligation to others. We realize we are part of something larger than ourselves. On some level, conscious or otherwise, we ask ourselves: Why am I here on Earth? Will stepping up make a difference? Will someone care?
For some, answering those questions comes with the job.
Among fire, police and rescue workers, hundreds of whom were killed in New York City, there tends to be a predetermined acceptance of the risk. Some cops voice it as resignation: If I go out on my shield, so be it. Some firefighters bury the logical fear that they won’t survive a danger by viewing it as a predicament to be outwitted rather than a threat to be feared.
Those who had the most time to ponder their deaths last Tuesday were, of course, the terrorists. Perhaps they were bathed in self-righteous zeal, sure that slaughtering civilians would avenge grievances or bring attention to their cause. If, as many pundits have speculated, they also were motivated by the promise of an afterlife, may they attain the one they richly deserve.
The more heart-wrenching mental image is of those elite New York City firefighters hauling heavy rescue equipment up stairwells, passing office workers headed down. And those stories of defiant hostages speaking from the plane, their mutinous intent punctuated with a sentence most of us routinely speak with little pause or conviction: I love you.
These are people who will be remembered long after most of us have forgotten their names. For those who sacrifice, that is often how it goes. Two years ago, the journal Social Psychology Quarterly chronicled how mountain rescue volunteers in the American West routinely risked their lives among cliffs, rivers and avalanches. One common trait was, surprisingly, a desire for public anonymity rather than acclaim. The author likened them to icons of film and fiction–“masked men who disappear before the crowd can thank them.”
Because we have no better word than hero, we have overused it. With the best of intentions, we have come to apply it not only to those who face deadly risks, but to those who, for example, champion worthy causes or earnest convictions.
It is time to be more stingy with the term.
The victims who took risks Tuesday did not choose to die. Rather, to serve something larger than themselves, they decided to accept that fate.
