“Wouldn’t you rather die on your feet, than serve on your knees?” This statement employs a type of vain morality that drives people into courageous self-sacrifice: killing themself for how others will see them. This is devoid of survival strategy and therefore (individually) quite stupid.
And yet the idea (or image) of who we are is how we want to be seen, and it so profoundly affects our species that we can override survival.
On one hand, we have the natural impulse to save our child, or any child, as the propagation of the species.
On the other, you have a system that promotes brutal heroism and prods the shivering, shamed lonely into community sacrifice. This is not the loving mother, but a hijacked urge for approval from a missing father.