Is one human life worth more than another?
The moral dilemmas of favouritism
We play favourites every day. It’s human nature. I love my family more than anyone else. I’d help a friend over a stranger. We go above and beyond for the people we know and care about.
No one likes to say that one life is worth more than another. But at the end of the day, our actions speak louder than words. And our actions almost always favour the people we know.
Have you ever heard of the trolley problem? If you haven’t, here is a tldr: A trolley will kill 5 people unless you pull a lever that moves it to a side track where only one person will die.
For many, the logic is easy: five deaths vs one. Would we not want to save as many lives as possible?
Here is a plot twist: what if the one person was your best friend? Your parent? Your significant other? Your child? Would you save them over five complete strangers? I’m willing to bet that most people would.
We favour our loved ones. And no one can really blame us for that.
Here’s the thing though. Those five other strangers, they are someone else’s best friend. Someone’s daughter or son. Someone’s mother or sister. While they might be strangers to you, they are all treasured by someone.
The logical decision is to save the five lives. To reduce the number of families and friends in grief. In fact, right now when considering this hypothetical problem, I might even say that I would choose to save those five people.
But in the heat of the moment, if the trolley was rolling along the track, my instinct would probably be to save the one person I know. Not because those five lives aren’t important, but because when push comes to shove, our instinctual decisions oftentimes aren’t logical. They come from the heart, and the heart plays favourites.
There is a concept called effective altruism which is centred around how we can most help others. It’s the idea of doing good for as many people as possible, instead of playing favourites to a specific cause.
However, I am inclined to say that even the most altruistic of us are more altruistic about things we care about. Rather than donating our time and money to the cause that will help the most people, we focus on what we think is most important. (Read more of my thoughts on altruism here).
Even with good deeds, favouritism is still at play. In this case, we aren’t favouring our friends over strangers, but instead a group of strangers over another group of strangers.
If a bullet was speeding towards a child, would you shield them with your thousand-dollar laptop? If a baby was drowning, would you ruin your Armani suit or Prada purse to jump in to save them? Even if you didn’t know the victim, you probably would. After all, a human life is worth more than a thousand bucks.
But sponsoring a child through World Vision only costs $39 a month. And for just $250, you can provide the urgent medical care required to save a child’s life in Yemen. Yet when we have an extra couple hundred bucks in our bank account, we aren’t so willing to give it away. Out of sight, out of mind.
It’s fascinating — although unsurprising — how we only pay attention to the causes that hit close to home, unless it is staring us right in the face. While we recognize favouritism when it harms others, when it comes to good deeds, we rarely think about our motivations. We don’t want to look a horse’s gift it the mouth.
Playing favourites is an inevitable fact of life. After all, we are tribal creatures. We live in communities that are built on having each others backs.
No singular human life is inherently more valuable than another. After all, everyone has a story we know nothing about. And everyone is important to someone.
But our experiences allow us to create bonds with other people. To learn their stories. It allows us to empathize and it helps us to love.
So at the end of the day, even our good deeds will favour the ones we love.
The question becomes, is that that a bad thing?
