Pick: Rugged Individualism Or Cooperative Interdependence

You are on a cruise and the ship sinks. You and about 50 of your shipmates are able to reach a remote island via the lifeboats. You have some food and water that you grabbed and threw into a backpack before abandoning ship. You are also the most physically fit of the survivors and happen to have the most knowledge concerning survival in the wild.

Others in the group put forward the idea that everyone should pool available resources to create a rationing system. Then, those who are able-bodied should work together to build shelters, treat the injured and search for additional food and water on the island.

Would you join in with this plan of collective survival? Or would you set off on your own, wishing the others

 

Given that one person had superior knowledge of the situation, and where with all to handle it, that guy would become boss.

You don't leave critical decisions of group survival to a group of fucking idiots.

 

Individualism doesn't preclude the option of cooperative interdependence. If one has the option, as opposed to being forced, it is more appealing imo.

 

If you had any survival experience you'd know your best option is with other people.

 

There are fifty some odd other people, and one person has the knowledge, skills and ability to very reasonably help them and even save their lives, and you are asking whether or not that person should stay and try, or @#$%-off and leave them to their fate/to die?

 

So go off on my own and do everything myself; or manage all of the others as their new king and savior?

I'll go with the group option.

 

YOu always join up. Our ancestors did not survive up to this day and age by being loners. And even the loners came down off the mountain to the village from time to time.

 

There has been a lot of studies showing that leaving just about anything to a group decision is a bad idea. There is no better example than the hell one goes through trying to complete group assignments in school.

I would still go with a group as long as its not too democratic.

 

I'm not sure what the point of this thread is, but it seems like it's tryiing make a point in the favour of 'rugged individualism'.

It's not a good scenario for that though.

First of all, a someone already said, survival situation like this you would certainly not want to be alone. One slip and badly sprained ankle and you die alone in the woods, no matter how 'rugged' and 'independently minded' you are.

Second of all, telling a group that includes women and children 'good luck, peace out' when they ask for your help is a pretty dick move.

 

This. It doesn't even matter if you were Survivor Man. Even being the most fit and most knowledgeable, your best chance of survival is with the group.

 

I've gotten the impression that people are for a group, but a group that has a hierarchy where a few people take charge and do most of the decision making.

If I were in this situation and I were a survival expert I would take all of the beautiful women with me and leave everyone else to fend for themselves. :icon_chee

 

Didn't read...theoretical political bs..

 

This is an entirely false claim meant to avoid the moral implications of the scenario.

What if the island, combined with the resources in your backpack, proved extremely limited? In other words, enough for perhaps you and one or two others to survive on for an extended period of time - but quickly depleted when rationed out to 50 individuals.

How well do you think Bear Grylls would do if they not only dropped him from the helicopter in a remote locale but added some injured, elderly and children that he had to stay with in a "co-survival" scenario?

Get real and try again.

 

Come up with a better scenario, or get to the point of your opinion on this will ya.

You keep leading the witness.

 

The ultimate purpose of this scenario is to make the reader aware of the complete disconnect we have as a society between the qualities of courage, sacrifice and compassion we expect, respect and admire in human beings given a collective micro survival situation and the wholly antithetical qualities we respect and admire in human beings given a collective macro survival situation; the situation that is daily life on this island, planet Earth.

 

If you possess the knowledge and cannot articulate enough to delegate to the ignorant, you are effectively just as useless as they are. To further that notion, being the source of knowledge puts you in a position of power to the point that the group will sacrifice to keep you alive as you are the most important resource.

Would you rather have one person looking after you or 50 people looking after you? Even as an individualist, the key to looking after number 1 is to stay with the group and rule.

 

Sounds like the perfect chance to install a dictatorship

 

Should we, as individual members of a society, be called upon and expected to forego full independence and personal gain in order to prevent the deaths, ease the sufferings and advance the standard of living of others?

Or is it every man for himself, the goal full maximization of all personal strengths and advantages (earned or gifted), full steam ahead and 'sorry for ya'...?

And why will the same person often pick the first when considering, for example, a battlefield, but pick the second when considering the marketplace?