Cowardice. A word that is used to denigrate and motivate. We learn to overcome fear in order to fight because to not fight is cowardice. To run away is cowardice.
The U.S. Army nearly got it right when they said that the mission of the soldier in a survival situation is to stay alive. That mission is taken straight out of Nature's playbook. However, the U.S. Army also refers to staying alive with dignity and honour. Nature doesn't care about dignity and honour. Those are man-made constructs that are designed to get people to act in a particular way. Nature is only interest in our survival.
There are no cowards in nature. Does the lioness who runs from a wilderbeast get chastised and ostracised because she ran away? No. Judgements are for humans, and judgements are designed to get people to act in a particular way.
Many people refer to fight-or-flight to describe our natural responses to a threat. Those many people do not understand that they have a limited and flawed understanding of a limited and flawed concept.
Fight-or-flight does not indicate choice. These are instinctive, meaning unconscious, survival behaviours that were selected for in nature because they conferred a survival advantage on an individual. And there is an order to the survival behaviours. It has been consistently shown that the order of survival behaviours is dependent on increasing proximity of threat with flight being the first option followed by fight if flight is obstructed.
Flee when you can, fight when you must. Nature's way.
Man then comes along and places judgements on nature's survival process. What's even worse is that those judgements then cause damage and gets people killed after nature did it's job and the person survived.
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Your comments make my work all the more relevant as I use them to direct my research and theorising. Thank you.