Why do some run towards danger while others run away, asks writer Lisa Fouweather

A sentiment that is echoed throughout the entirety of our lives is the importance of prioritising our needs.

When we get on a plane, we’re told to put our oxygen mask on first before helping anyone else.

When the fire alarm goes off in school, we’re told to leave our bags, leave our friends, and ‘just concentrate on getting out as quickly as possible.’

Everything we are taught growing up, as children, is about self-preservation, making sure that WE are safe, and that we prioritise OUR safety over that of other people.

Yet, as adults, everything that we are taught is about selflessness.

‘Prioritise your needs, but simultaneously, put other people’s needs above your own.’

‘Help thy neighbor’ but, remember, ‘charity begins at home.’

(Evidently, these are conflicting messages).

It’s perhaps unsurprising then, given the nature of the contradictory life lessons that we are given throughout our lives, that there are such discrepancies in the way in which we act in the face of danger.

Alas, it’s a topic that fascinates me.

‘Why do some people run towards danger, whilst some people run away from it?’

Some recent real-life examples of the former [running toward danger].

The audience members who didn’t think twice about intercepting a knife-wielding man responsible for stabbing Sir Salman Rushdie in 2022 while delivering a lecture in New York.

The teachers who were killed after trying to save children from a gunman in their school.

The aid workers from the World Central Kitchen who went to Gaza last month and were subsequently killed by an Israeli air strike.

The father who died in 2021 trying to shield his daughter from Plymouth shooter, Jake Davison.

The man, Steve Gallant, who confronted London Bridge terror attacker Usman Khan in 2019.

So many examples of people risking their own lives to save someone else’s (in many instances, a complete stranger’s).

But, why?

The question is, ‘Is running towards danger, as in the examples above, really human nature, or is it just an exception?’

That is to ask, ‘Are humans naturally primed to run away from danger, running towards it being a heroic act, ‘superhuman’, or is running towards it actually just... human?

Human nature which has not yet been corrupted by a society that arguably attempts to drill that sense of community out of us?

Some people go under the knife to have a kidney removed to save a complete stranger’s life, some people grab hold of a knife with the intention to kill/with the intention to take away a complete

stranger’s life.

Which is natural?

Are we inherently ‘good’, or are we inherently ‘evil?’

I would argue for the former, that humans are inherently ‘good’, for there are examples of our goodness, our selflessness, everywhere.

Whether it’s taking two seconds to hold the door open for someone when you could’ve just let it slam in their face and gotten on with your day (the little things), or donating a literal organ to a stranger to save their life (the big things), by virtue of being human, we all know what it means to act selflessly (that is, to be considerate of other people).

People who sign up to join the army or the emergency services/people who make it their life’s work to help other people. Yes, granted, they do get paid for it, but there are far less demanding jobs out there with far greater pay than nursing, for example, yet something* makes them choose such a career regardless.

*(That ‘something’ being because they just want to help people).

It’s the motivation behind any selfless act- to be of service, to help.

When people donate blood, for example. What is a small act for them, is a potentially lifesaving act for someone else.

When we personally get nothing out of it, if humans were inherently selfish by nature, then there wouldn’t be almost 800,000 people who regularly give up their time each year to donate blood.

Such selflessness is evident in the animal kingdom, too, in meerkats, for example.

One meerkat will always be on the ‘lookout’, standing at the highest possible point while the rest of the group searches for food, sending out a high-pitched call every few seconds to let the hunters know they are safe from danger. The meerkat that makes the alarm is often targeted and killed when danger strikes, all in the name of protecting the mob.

A ‘sacrificial lamb’ (but make it: meerkat).

Evidently, then, selfishness is not just a human trait, but a universal trait across the animal kingdom.

So, what changes things? What shifts to the extent that our inherent nature which should see us running toward danger to help, sees us running away from the danger or, in some instances, creating the danger itself?

According to a former military psychologist, Russell Shilling, whether we run toward or away from danger all comes down to experience.

An orphan, for example, whose parents died in a house fire might not have the same instinct to run into a burning building as someone with no trauma around fire.

As much as they might want to help, because it triggers what happened to them, putting them back in that place for which no one would willingly walk back into, they stay on the sidelines.

On people who run neither to or from danger but create the danger itself, as in the whole ‘are people born evil’ debate which I wrote about here, I believe that these people, in line with Shilling’s theory of it all coming down to experience, are acting on impulse from experience.

Experience which often constitutes oppression by the power-hungry who are singlehandedly responsible for creating such a divisive society.

People are not made by a corrupt society. Society is made by corrupt people.

In other words, the world isn’t ‘bad’, the world just has some bad people who do bad things within it.

The reality is that the world itself is intrinsically good, and human nature is intrinsically good, but greed/a constant pursuit for more, more, more, can see our nature being corrupted, from above.

Why? Because people become disillusioned with the corruption that heads Western civilisation.

The corruption that sees the 1% at the top, who got to the top by oppressing everyone else (just consider the history behind the royal family, for example, built around slavery and colonisation), dictating the lives of the 99% at the bottom.

Ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.

― Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays.

When we’re brought up in a society that is centered on corruption, greed, and unequal power distribution (ie., capitalism), it’s easy to get caught up in thinking that selflessness is our natural state because it’s all we’ve ever known.

But, we only have to consider countries that operate under principles of socialism, countries where collectivism is emphasised over individualism, to see that it is the system (human-made) that is the problem.

No one is born selfish, just as no one is born evil. Yet all it takes is the greed of one person who seeks to take control for a cycle of apparent selfishness to take hold.

When capitalism is centered on such greed, reliant on the minority at the top dictating to the masses at the bottom, the fact is that, until we are able to dismantle such a system, selfishness will continue to exist in society/people will keep running away in the face of danger.

But, in the meantime, we must not lose sight of the overpowering fact that we are inherently good, and that goodness/selflessness will prevail, always.

And, to the people who question if selflessness actually exists- ‘Is any act truly selfless when we derive a sense of personal gratification from it?’, to those people I would pose a(nother) question;

‘WHY do we feel a sense of gratification from being selfless?’

The reason points to why people run toward danger instead of away from it.

Because, selflessness is what we are at our core, our ‘true nature...’ Acting in selfless ways therefore satiates something within us, making us feel whole/ complete, a homecoming.

'It’s not about trying to fix the world around you but, instead, about looking inward to discover that it was never broken.'