"Do you believe that sacrifice is the noblest of acts?" (yes, i got it right where you think i did).

This essay question stumped me! Seeing that i had only 2 minutes to think about relevant examples in "literature, arts, science and technology , history, and current events", i couldn't. Not even one. The only thing I managed were love triangles, where usually someone 'sacrifices' himself so that the other two could be happy...

What are your thoughts on this question?

To me...
there's a lot of history of people's sacrifice.
Such as a man sacrifice for her country, to let a country to be independant.
I'm not really sure about it...but I know that sacrifice for country is the noblest act. :think:

Sacrifice is everwhere these days in the media, I could think of a few examples, albeit most of them came from videogames (I've just been playing Freespace 2) and movies. Anywho sacrificing yourself for someone else's sake is a rather noble act and would take a lot to let it happen so yes sacrifice is very noble indeed.

I think that it is an act that shows alot of character, yes i do.

I agree, it is. To give up something of yours for someone else is something that takes a lot.

Does the end justify the means?

depends on the type of sacrafice,
i know i would sacrafice my life to save my friends or other people i care about...i would give up my life to save the majority, but never for a cause i dnt beleive in. i do consider it one of the most noble acts

I suppose it's a noble act...I don't like sacrifice because even though the majority of the time for good intentions, it doesn't always make people happy.

There's this one example that springs to mind. I can't remember who wrote the book but it's something along these line: After a nuclear fall out, a small family in a countryside village try to survive the nuclear fall out. Eventually there are only two stepsisters remaining out of the family and the oldest (Sarah) starts going outside to get her younger sister (Catherine) food and water that hasn't been contaminated by radiation. It was so sad. How do you decide you're going to allow yourself to die (and from such excruciating poisoning too) for the sake of someone who you'd never been that close to. Eventually Sarah died from radiation poisoning and Catherine married the sole survivior (a really old guy who shot anyone who tried to get into his house after the fallout)...so yeah...actually thinking more...I'm not sure if perhaps sacrifice is just an easier option that working out a problem through other means...*ponders more*

True, it doesn't always make people happy, but it is the most noble thing to do. Mainly because you are willing to give up EVERYTHING to protect someone.

edit: don't want to double post.

SACRIFICE IS NOT ALWAYS NOBLE!

Noble means showing good character. So if you sacrfice yourself out of shear vengence then how is that noble. Then sometimes it's mixed. Say you kill a lot of people in a suicide bombing but did it to feed your family.

the stupidity of one man/woman beautified by those who had enough brains to not to do it themselves, but still feel the need to pity/thank and glorify those who "sacrificed" themselves.

humans are greedy by nature. we do what's best for us, and if that helps others, well that's a bonus. its just when the benefit isn't apparent.. that we call it sacrifice.

the guy that "sacrifices" is just doing the act of his/her best interest, i.e "If I don't sacrifice myself to blah blah, then I can't live with myself afterwards"

short example: a platoon of soldiers surrounded by enemies on a lone hill. one guy was out of the siege scouting, but instead of running away he takes a whole bag of explosives and blows himself up with the enemy, so the rest of the platoon lived. "noble sacrifice", but really, the guy would prefer that he die saving his comrades than live and deal with himself. "saving everybody else" is just a result, but the objective.

another example: charity isn't really giving up "for the sake of others", it's that you would prefer to give that something away so you can feel better about yourself for helping someone, then to hold that something.

in conclusion: they're not doing it for anyone other than themselves, call me cynical but i know i would make sacrifices too because it's in my best interest, not for anyone. so is it noble? definitely not.

finally, someone who understands me :D

Kou, you're a genius!!!

If you already knew the answer to what you were looking for why did you ask it in the first place?

because its always nice to see people who agree with you

What do you mean "knew the answer"? There is no 'correct' answer; and the topic was created to find out what others think...

Sacrifice is noble, but how can you tell if it's the noblest?

Alone and Kou, you apparently do not believe in the ethical idea of Categorical Imperative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_Imperative), but it would be a good thing to bring up if you were writing an essay about that. Kou's speech reminded me of that, so ... there it is.

the stupidity of one man/woman beautified by those who had enough brains to not to do it themselves, but still feel the need to pity/thank and glorify those who "sacrificed" themselves.

humans are greedy by nature. we do what's best for us, and if that helps others, well that's a bonus. its just when the benefit isn't apparent.. that we call it sacrifice.

the guy that "sacrifices" is just doing the act of his/her best interest, i.e "If I don't sacrifice myself to blah blah, then I can't live with myself afterwards"

short example: a platoon of soldiers surrounded by enemies on a lone hill. one guy was out of the siege scouting, but instead of running away he takes a whole bag of explosives and blows himself up with the enemy, so the rest of the platoon lived. "noble sacrifice", but really, the guy would prefer that he die saving his comrades than live and deal with himself. "saving everybody else" is just a result, but the objective.

another example: charity isn't really giving up "for the sake of others", it's that you would prefer to give that something away so you can feel better about yourself for helping someone, then to hold that something.

in conclusion: they're not doing it for anyone other than themselves, call me cynical but i know i would make sacrifices too because it's in my best interest, not for anyone. so is it noble? definitely not.

I took a bullet for someone I didn't even know (Now I do)... heh...

I also heard that if you died for your country, that would be counted as sacrifice. But surely, living is better than blowing up into pieces, wouldn't it? Like, if you were the only soldier left surrounded by enemies, would you surrender, or would you kill yourself? It would be noble to kill yourself. Right? I don't know, just something I have heard before.

Death before dishonour I think is what you're after.

Kou: I don't think that in an emergency, and people had to choose between life and death in a split second, that they would... erm... think of the glory that would be showered over their dead body after the sacrifice. When one dies for his country, or for a group of people, he wouldn't even know if he'd be remembered, he wouldn't know if his sacrifice would be worthwhile... All he knows then are his values and his beliefs...

dominate_ze_world: Yep, you're thinking of death before dishonour, which is also related to sacrifices, which also links back to holding on to one's beliefs.

Wait... so is that with or against what we're talking about. I'd think with...

Edit: I didn't know that here was an actual phrase for that...

Really, never heard of death before dishonour... That's kinda, especially since the thing under your username says "Ronin Samurai".

No doubt, killing yourself and hoping to take some of the enemy with you would be "noble", but you can do more good for your country by surrendering and later escaping, only to rejoin your forces later. Similarly, a hopelessly outnumbered division may decide to "stand their ground", which is also "noble" - my answer is:

"He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day - ?"

Thing being that they hostile forces might not actually take you prisoner, they couold just kill you, also escaping captors is a lot more difficult than it sounds or some movies/books make it out to be. Unless their was a reason that they couldn't run away (i.e. enveloped) or it was one of those "this is the last line of defence" like the Battle of the Line, the division probably would retreat, at least I think they would.

but you can do more good for your country by surrendering and later escaping, only to rejoin your forces later.
That's the silliest thing I've ever heard... What do you think that is, a movie?:whistle:

No, I just suppose that you will be more useful alive than corpse...

"Really, never heard of death before dishonour... That's kinda, especially since the thing under your username says "Ronin Samurai"."

No, I knew what it was, I just didn't know that the phrase describing it was called "death before dishonour". I usually just describe it like I did first.

An SAT essay question off the Princeton Review book, right? This might be late, but a good tip for the SAT is: They don't care what examples you use as long as you can logically string the examples into an argument. This means you can make up the examples and they wouldn't care, so stick to personal experiences.

Though if you must have different areas of examples (no idea why you would want to if your goal is to ace the essay), for actual historic sacrifices... you can argue that Joan of Arc is noble, I'm sure everybody knows her story. Then, there's Jesus Christ which would obviously be the ultimate sacrifice. For literature, bring out someone like erm... Ender, from Card's Ender's game, it's unique because in that story, society sacrifices him, he doesn't choose to be sacrificed. Afterwards, bring out some media character, sacrifice is a big film theme so it can't be tough to find a hollywood hit for it.

I couldn't finish my Oct 8 essay in time... they seriously give you too little time to write.

Yeah, I figured out that Jesus would have been an awesome example (and probably the one they were looking for) afterthe 25minutes ended