What's Right Isn't Always Popular

[The Straight Story]

Saturday, June 14, 2008
What's Right Isn't Always Popular

A group of children were playing near two railway tracks, one still in use while the other unused. Only one child played on the unused track, the rest on the operational track.

The train is coming, and you are just beside the track interchange. You can make the train change its course to the unused track and save most of the kids. However, that would also mean the lone child playing by the unused track would be sacrificed. Or would you rather let the train go its way?

Let's take a pause to think what kind of decision we could make........ ........



Most people might choose to divert the course of the train, and sacrifice only one child. You might think the same way, I guess. Exactly, to save most of the children at the expense of only one child was rational decision most people would make, morally and emotionally. But, have you ever thought that the child choosing to play on the unused track had in fact made the right decision to play at a safe place?

Nevertheless, he had to be sacrificed because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was. This kind of dilemma happens around us everyday. In the office, community, in politics and especially in a democratic society, the minority is often sacrificed for the interest of the majority, no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are, and how farsighted and knowledgeable the minority are. The child who chose not to play with the rest on the operational track was sidelined. And in the case he was sacrificed, no one would shed a tear for him.

http://www.amazingposts.com/2008/06/whats-right-isnt-always-popular.html

[rpannier]

1. Interesting

I was intrigued by the part of Leo Velsi...
he (Velski) would not try to change the course of the train because he believed that the kids playing on the operational track should have known very well that track was still in use, and that they should have run away if they heard the train's sirens

[Dogmudgeon]

2. This assumes that every happenstance involves right and wrong

Only human responses can be right or wrong, and good or evil.

Dilemmas similar to this DO happen, and with surprising frequency. Nazi Germany was a veritable ethics laboratory, where a number of Jews and Leftists chose to stick around until after Kristalnacht. Many people had to decide whether to turn in two or three "undesirables", or give up a whole city block. Giving up a small number of people could allow many to escape. And like the railroad track example, the "correct" decision would have been to leave Germany before 1938.

Prisons often find ways to put their wards in can't-win ethical dilemmas. After a few rolls of the moral dice, the convict's conscience is weighted down with an unbearable load of guilt. That might not concern a psychopath, but for captured soldiers or political prisoners, it would.

But the moral point of view we REALLY ought te pay attention to, is the context in which these questions are asked. We tend to be an opinionated bunch, and most of us have self-images that we are intelligent, hard-headed realists, curmudgeons who are unafraid to make hard and unpopular decisions. Hypotheticals like this appeal to our intellectual vanity. In many ways, these ethical-dilemma tests show us a clearer picture of our cruelty than any system of moral reasoning we use.

--p!

[AuntPatsy]

3. Interesting response and one I feel hits to the heart of asking such a question...

[msongs]

4. ;why not just get ALL the kids off the train track? nt

[kentuck]

5. It assumes that the one kid is worth less than the rest of the group..

By quantity alone, we measure life and make a decision that more is better. Even though we do not know the road that the group would take or the road that the right kid would take? Perhaps they would all go to prison? Perhaps they would be criminals? Perhaps the other kid was Jesus? Perhaps right is not always right?

[Jack_DeLeon]

6. I wouldnt do anything....

I didnt cause the situation to happen, so its not my responsibility. I wouldnt want that one dead kid on my conscious, as for the other kids they shouldnt have been playing in the train tracks so its their own faults.