ABSTRACT
Chapter 14 offers psychological, social, and cultural perspectives on survivorship that reveal the complexity of this phenomenon. Survival dilemmas, as in Sophie’s Choice, point out the paradoxes of survivorship: residual toxicity of survival mode or survivor’s guilt after the survival task is accomplished and the inherent conflict between biological self-preservation and cultural priorities, such as self-sacrifice for the well-being of others. Totalitarian martyrdom glorifies and encourages self-sacrifice in the name of the ideal, and even communal property, and government-supported convictions diminish the value of human life. Ecological models differentiate between adaptation and survival. The r/K model links the choice of strategy to an investment in the future. The illusion of predictability and belief in a just world offered by a totalitarian state encourages strategies of adaptation, normalization of abuse, and acceptance of it as a new norm of daily life. Investment in such a future desensitizes citizens to signs of danger and suppresses the survival mode until it is too late.
