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MENTAL MODEL · M11774

Sacrificing Life for Righteousness

Sacrificing Life for Righteousness
CultureHigh supportChinese Philosophy
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Updated 2026-08-22

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

She sheng qu yi, sacrificing life to take righteousness, is Mencius's choice in the parable of the fish and the bear's paw: when life and duty cannot be held together, life is given up and duty kept. The core proposition is a ranking of values, in which some goods are lower and one is not to be traded away, and that ranking has to be fixed in advance because in a crisis an unranked hierarchy collapses into calculation. The key qualification is that righteousness is not a slogan, since it survives only if its cost has been accepted beforehand.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Value ranking: decide in advance which values cannot be traded, so the hierarchy exists before the crisis. - Scenario preview: name the situations where profit will conflict with safety or compliance. - Cost acceptance: take the foreseeable loss of holding the line instead of renegotiating under pressure.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

Judgment degrades under threat and time pressure, so a hierarchy that has never been ranked gets computed on the spot and the lower good usually wins, because its loss is visible while the higher loss is not. Fixing the order in advance removes that calculation, and a public commitment raises the cost of sliding back, so the sacrifice becomes executable rather than merely admirable.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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    zh.wikipedia.orghttps://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%AD%9F%E5%AD%90ZH · Explicit
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