Ethics and the dilemma of right vs. wrong: a reflection
Imagine you’re driving a train and the brakes have failed. Up ahead, five workers are on the track. You lean on the horn, but they don’t hear it. Then, in a panic, you spot a side track with just one person on it. Do you switch tracks, deliberately killing one person to save five? Would that be the right thing to do? (The trolley problem)
The answer lies within each of us: in the values we live by, and in the wider context of our society. Every school of ethics has its own take.
Do you put the interests of the many ahead of the few, or do you stand up for the vulnerable?
Do you set yourself moral rules you’ll never break, or do you bend depending on the situation?
Do you want the protection of laws and government, or would you rather keep things free and let people work things out among themselves?
There are so many schools of thought that I’m not even sure which one is mine.
Take Robin Hood, who robs the rich to give to the poor. Is that right?
Should we persuade someone who’s dying to donate their organs to save several others? Is a society that lets people pay their way out of military service a just one?
There are plenty of hard moral questions with no black-or-white answer. What matters most in these debates, I think, is being open to opposing views and respecting our differences. And don’t bother trying to change the other person’s mind. It won’t work.
This post grew out of what I picked up in Professor Michael Sandel’s Justice course.