I think there are multiple possible reasons people give their lives up for another, outside of religious influences.
1. There's a possibility that you have a strong innate sense of justice (or think you do), and you truly believe that if you could prevent someone dying at the risk of your own death, that sense of justice doesn't allow you to not do it.
2. Giving up your life for a loved one is easier. You'd rather die than live knowing you let them die. If you play out a scene in your head where you choose your own life and allow someone you love(enough) to die, it's easy to come to the conclusion that you'll very much regret that decision.
3. While 2. may sound rational, in the absence of the outcome you are able to live with, you choose death with a bonus that your loved one will get to live, it's hard to see someone logically come to this conclusion and because of this, choose to die. Rather I think it's because we have evolved to behave this way towards kin, we die so that our genes live on, and perhaps the mechanism of differentiating kin and nonkin got a little muddled up as our brain evolved, and now we do it for people we love.
As for why do people choose not to die for others, it's because our brains allow us to consciously resist our instincts, or because self-preservation wins over. Or because in our diversity, some people just have less of 3. or more of something else that makes them unwilling to die for someone else.
I think either choices are personal, and i don't think you can call either one moral/immoral. I don't really believe they're actual "choices" either. I think if you "choose" an option, it's because you find the alternative impossible to do.
1. There's a possibility that you have a strong innate sense of justice (or think you do), and you truly believe that if you could prevent someone dying at the risk of your own death, that sense of justice doesn't allow you to not do it.
2. Giving up your life for a loved one is easier. You'd rather die than live knowing you let them die. If you play out a scene in your head where you choose your own life and allow someone you love(enough) to die, it's easy to come to the conclusion that you'll very much regret that decision.
3. While 2. may sound rational, in the absence of the outcome you are able to live with, you choose death with a bonus that your loved one will get to live, it's hard to see someone logically come to this conclusion and because of this, choose to die. Rather I think it's because we have evolved to behave this way towards kin, we die so that our genes live on, and perhaps the mechanism of differentiating kin and nonkin got a little muddled up as our brain evolved, and now we do it for people we love.
As for why do people choose not to die for others, it's because our brains allow us to consciously resist our instincts, or because self-preservation wins over. Or because in our diversity, some people just have less of 3. or more of something else that makes them unwilling to die for someone else.
I think either choices are personal, and i don't think you can call either one moral/immoral. I don't really believe they're actual "choices" either. I think if you "choose" an option, it's because you find the alternative impossible to do.
