What's worth dying for? And I don't mean the literal sense of jumping off some cliff. I mean, what's important enough to you (if anything) that you would bleed yourself for. Your children? A standard? etc...

Freedom, love, family, country.

Edge pretty well summed it up. People will give up their lives for their highest ideal and that varies from person to person.

nah....he didn't include children...

any child is worth dying for....UNLESS, said child is some crazy whacked out kid like in The Bad Seed or The Good Son or sumtin'......or if said child is a teenager and bein' stupid....

but kids......yeah, you better die for a child, even if itz not your own.....

and of course, some friends are worth dying for.....not all, but some....

and of course family (the family you care about) and of course love.....but only if said lover love's you back.....

country? eh....call me unpatriotic if you want, but i don't think one should necessarily die for their country.....some do, of course, but not everyone.....i'm an american, i do love america, but i won't die for it unless i believe in the cause......

die for freedom? HA! thatz a joke.....we might be free, but we're not totally free.....

but yeah.....and of course, you always gotta figure in whether or not you'd die to save many others.....like if your death will save a hundred people.....would you? does it depend on the people though? of course it does...

I'm surprised at your quick agreement, considering you've made an impression on my mind that you're an avid fan of the philosophy of Huxley and therefore I assume good ol' Orson Wells, specifically his book 1984, where he demonstrated just how selfish people are.

I'm also thinking of Tool's "Eulogy" at this point where Keenan sings "would you now, would you die for me? don't you lie, don't you step outta line", etc...

I think it's much easier said than done.

I respect my country, but I won't die for it. I was born here cause my parents fucked here. That's all. I love what opportunities it gives me, but I might decide to move to the UK and love what opportunities the UK might offer me...doesn't mean if someone goes to war with that country, I'm gonna be all up in arms. I hate war, no matter what cause. It's not worthwhile to die for to me, because the people who decide to go to war are Idiots in charge.

A quote, "No general in war is ever a genius. A true genius would find a way around war."

Regardless of the ideology of that quote, it's no more ideological to say "I would die for said person or said cause."

And no, sixxx, I would not die for some kid I don't know. I can't honestly say I'd jump in front of a bullet for a loved one, but I can say I might very well just REACT and do that. But, I've never been in that situation, so I can't say, for myself... but to me, that's something worth dying for.

And sixxx responded to the Freedom thing correctly, in my opinion. I'd like to add as well that people really don't know what Freedom is, but I guess it is all perception anyway, right? Truth being relevent to one's reality and so forth...

P.S. If my kid was McCauly Caulkin (or however it's spelt), I'd kill the fucker myself.

Hey, it doesn't mean that it's all I have to say on the subject. I can better tailor my responses as a discussion progresses.
You are right though, people will die for ideals but only fanatical people will do so and fanatics often have to be brain-washed into believing that something integral to their being is at stake. Rather it be God, country, race and a whole slew of other things that sane, rational people understand to be a fluid comodity, rather then something necessary for survival.
The average man knows that his life can continue if his countryman are fighting a politically motivated war in another country. Whereas a fanatic dramatizes minor conflicts and convinces himself that the situation is of such drastic importance that it is imparitive that the conflict reach a conclusion where his side is the winner.
Otherwise he may well believe that: The forces of good will lose in a battle against Evil, Civilization as we know it will end, He will find his country conquered by a hostile power, etc, etc. Or all of the above.
When the average person feels that their life is without meaning they have nothing to validate their existence. No doubt many people suffer from such feelings.
If they can be convinced that a great, epic struggle between the forces of good and evil is eminent they may well jump at the chance to empower themselves by laying down their lives for God and Country. I have come to believe that that is why people want war, there are those who have become established fanatics, they feed off of the energy of every instance of conflict and if they cannot find a conflict to participate in then they will create one. Then there is the average man with nothing to live for who feels adrift and unempowered, if he can be convinced that the threat is real. He may well gladly follow along and perhaps see it as an opportunity to participate in something greater then himself. At that point, he has become one of them.
This person will soon grow to identify himself with the group or institution that he is fighting alongside and he will soon recognize anything different from this ideal as a direct attack against his "Tribe" and by extension, an attack against himself. A group of fanatics functions as a hive-mind in an exceedling primitive manner and they welcome any percieved threat or challenge as proof of their importance and righteousness. They de-humanize those with different ideals or those who merely live differently as being sub-human incarnations of evil that must be destroyed in order for a construct that has become integral to their sense of self, to survive.
That's the best explanation that I have come up with on my own to explain why people make war gladly.
The key difference between a long-term fanatic, a new innitiate into fanaticism and a sane person who will never become a fanatic is an understanding of what is worth living for. It is a knowledge of what truly makes life worth living and gives it meaning and that nothing is permanent. Being aware that all things are subject to and must change in order to properly survive is an acceptance of all things because all things change form. When someone understands and accepts this, they become aware that the minor differences in ideal and life-style that all humans share are also of little permanence and therefore not worth killing or dying for.
So, what is truly worth dying for then? The answer may be a question for every person: What, in your life do you have in your life that is so important to you that you would be unable to function without it's presence?
If you parse it down that much I have a hard time thinking of what that could be myself.
For me, it would have to be my sense of control. If the power I have over myself and the ability to make my own decisions were taken from me I don't think I could function properly. So for me, I'll have to say freedom.

my daughter

Marcus
Family
...in that order.

is Marcus not a horse?

Whats it mean to you? You wont understand.

you mean tell me that if you saw some toddler tryin' to cross a busy street, you wouldn't run out and risk your own life in an attempt to save 'em?

At least she mentioned her family . . . Second after the Horse but at least she thought of them . . .

true

yeah...so get up off me.

that sounded kinda kinky....

ah, I guess I misinterpreted you then. Yeah, I'd play Superman there, but I would do so for any person, I think. Life is life to me. I don't think my mind judges age as a factor of importance to this world. Mind you, I still want a lot of old people to die off already so us young'uns can get those jobs that those greedy mother fuckers won't let go of...heh.

As for you, Iron's Rite, yeah, sounds like Anthropology 101 again. Tribalism and such. I would chop it all down to perceptions being the governing force over what we decide is important enough for us to die for.

i dunno man....i see sum random adult walkin' out in traffic, either because they're retarded or wanna kill themselves, fuck 'em.....i ain't riskin' my neck for that shit.....

ok, lets get to the fine points and see what kinda people we really hate...

what if she had nice boobies? save the boobies?

nope....dumb sluts may perish

At the end of the day you have to think about the life's worth, and whether we like it or not, there's the impact to be assessed, so I see what you're saying.

If I die I leave a hole in a very small family. If a mother of four with parents and friends and neighbours die, that's a much bigger hole. If a child with years of life left dies that stings far more than if a fifty year old smoker coughs their last.

A lot of it is impulse, you don't automatically think 'Oh look, a child, I'll just run out and die for it under a bus'. You just do your best to save it, and I think that can happen with an adult as well, but the pull is less.

I have two little stories about reactions.

I was once in a hairdressers. I was doing a course as part of my making dead people look pretty, and there was this huge cactus, a good three foot tall. The owner's 2 year old sun slammed into it with his little walker thing and it fell towards him. I put my arm out and it stuck in me instead. Sure, it wouldn't have killed him, but the thought of that kid having to spend hours having those horrible little needles pulled out of him flashed through my head quickly. I don't