Posted on 02/27/2012 1:15:49 PM PST by ellenbrewster
Leave it to our current crop of mental health professionals not to understand self-sacrifice.
The Denver Post recently recalled two separate murderous incidents where two women, Jaquie Creazzo and Jeannie VanVelkinburgh, unsuccessfully tried to intervene and prevent the unrelated murders of strangers. Both women were left paralyzed during their noble attempts.
“Why did they do it?” is the question being pondered by experts, according to Leaf Van Boven, associate professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado. Obviously the concept of altruism is lost on many intellectuals.
“They may have an acute emotionally intense feeling of right and wrong. It’s not entirely clear,” says Van Boven. He makes it sound as if the two heroines suffered from some pitiful psychological disorder.
It’s little wonder that the present-day intellegencia is stumped. Unlike bygone days when the study of Biblical principals was de rigueur, the near-expulsion of the Scriptures from academia and the public square has left us with nary a thought except “looking out for number one” and “Me first.”
Do you suppose Creazzo and VanVelkinburgh were Bible readers? If not, perhaps they heard the accounts of heroic soldiers throwing themselves on hand grenades to save others.
As the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking approaches, I wonder if these two splendid ladies knew the true selflessness displayed during that tragedy. Unlike James Cameron’s film, which was visually stunning but historically inaccurate, passengers and crew gave their lives to secure the rescue of 710, regardless of those survivors’ social rank.
Intense efforts were made to bring third-class passengers up on deck and to safety. Multimillionaires Benjamin Guggenheim and John Jacob Astor continuously helped women and children onto the lifeboats while refusing to take their own assumed seats. The men died with 1,514 others.
Per chance, were Creazzo and VanVelkinburgh influenced by Biblical themes once prevalent in literature? In “A Tale of Two Cities” Charles Dickens’ unconventional hero is the alcoholic Sidney Carton who, in his one sober moment, goes altruistically to the guillotine in place of another, saying. “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done…”
In the last 60 years, the concept of self-sacrifice has been muted in our egocentric culture. Yet, in the face of severe violence, our women of note silenced the instinct of self-preservation.
I applaud Professor Van Boven’s first analysis. “It may be that these individuals experience an overwhelming sense of empathy and moral calling that compels them to act.”
What Van Boven calls empthy and moral calling, an old preacher friend would call “divinely imparted prompting” in the hearts of Jaquie Creazzo and Jeanie VanVelkenburgh.
Bible Byte: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)
(Former syndicated columnist Ellen Makkai invites you to join her in cyberspace at www.ellenmakkai.com)
Intellectual elite - educated but lacking in intelligence.
good comment. A pity, yes?!
Because they have character?
These are examples of personal decisions by individuals to voluntarily sacrifice their values. This is different from the government using force to violate the natural rights of individuals by confiscatory taxation to redistribute to others.
There are people that act without thinking to helping others, there are people that think without acting to help others.
But who truly knows why? I once jumped out and lifted a full grown man with my left arm then jumped 6 feet with him in tow to save him from an oncoming vehicle. I never thought about it, years later I wouldn’t go out past the break in the surf to help a friend struggling in the rip — I had just made it in myself by not panicking and using the dead man float. When I looked at him, I saw panic in his eyes and I just froze. He was rescued by a surfer with surf board. I felt ashamed, but I knew if I went out there one or both of us would have drowned.
It could have been that they were born for that very moment. You know the question really is am I a man or a mouse? And every day there is an opportunity to answer that question. These ladies answered it heroically. I hope I would do the same and I am guessing I would.
We all wish we would have God’s grace to rise and help those in supreme crisis, don’t we.
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