Trust your instinct when faced with a pressing moral dilemma
Excerpt from “Why Knot?” Buy the book at Amazon
A friend of mine was faced with this puzzle in an Ethics class:
• You are in a speeding trolley.
• The trolley can’t stop.
• Five people are standing on one track, and one person is standing on another.
• All you can do is switch to a different track.
• If you do nothing, five people die.
• If you switch tracks, one person dies.
• What do you do?
It would be a different moral question if those at risk could influence the outcome — for instance, if one of them could opt to die so the other five might live. You could consider that all people are equal, and hence five people are worth more than one. I am uncomfortable with that approach. I believe that each life has infinite value and that you cannot add to or subtract from infinity. In addition, the real world is messy, and choices that at first seem good may lead to unintended consequences. Sacrificing the one to save the five might be the wrong decision for reasons you could not have anticipated.
You might be tempted to categorize and judge people as more or less valuable by some criterion. But that approach brings to mind Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the slippery slope leads to such moral nonsense as “All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.”
You could also flip a coin or use another random method to decide. But by so doing, you would be abdicating responsibility.
Solution? You should do what spontaneously seems right. Don’t overthink. Shoot from the hip. Act immediately. Feel the guilt and responsibility. Don’t run from it with rationalizations and calculations. Feel the need for penance, the urge to make up for what you have done.
The decision should have consequences for the decider. You will always be in debt to those who die and those who are dear to them. You will also feel connected to those who survive, and they to you as well.
Guilt is the glue that holds society together. It should be valued, not avoided. You can never be guiltless, and you can never completely atone for guilt. Life is enriched by connections with others by love, guilt, and mutual obligation.
For survival, humans are programmed to act with a minimum of hesitation in such situations. Follow that instinct. Then accept responsibility for what you have done. Don’t tell yourself that you had no choice. Those at risk all mattered to you and will still matter to you after the event. You honor them and connect to them by feeling guilt even after they are dead.
