Choose

There are thirty people in a room.  There are explosives tied to these thirty people.  There is a madman,  in a remote location with his finger on the detonator, and he is waiting for you to make a decision.  You say the word, and he will push the button, annihilating those thirty people.  But also, in his other hand is another button that he is just as willing to push.  All you have to do is tell him which one.  This other button can remotely detonate a different location, on the other side of town.  This other room has a single person in it.  Which button do you tell him to push?  There are no other choices.  He is going to press one with or without you telling him which one.  If you do decide to tell him which one to push, he will comply with your wishes, but no matter what, he is going to push one.

We now arrive at a moral dilemma.  How could we possibly choose someone to die?  Who are we to play God?  Well, the obvious choice is to save the thirty people by losing the one, right?  Could you really tell this madman, "Yes, go ahead and kill the guy."  Congratulations, you just saved thirty people!  But, conversely, you will have to live with the fact that you are responsible for someone's death.  You may justify it to yourself because of the thirty you saved.  

Let's think about this again, but with a minor change.  Imagine the one person alone in room number two is a loved one.  A spouse, a child, mother, father, whatever.  Someone you love very deeply.  Now what?  Still save the thirty people?  

For a while, I thought about it and decided, "Nope!  I will not make the call.  I will let this lunatic with the two buttons decide which one to press and then I can live on, conscience clear of any wrong doing because it was not me who decided that someone should die.  Of course!," I said to myself.  "Well played.  I guessed the correct answer, ethics in tact."  But the more I thought about, the less sure I was.  What about this:  the madman will press both buttons if you don't come to a decision.  This puts a kink in the idea that not deciding is a morally sound choice.  More people die if you don't tell him which to press.

The point I guess I'm trying to make, albeit in a non-intuitive way, is that sometimes we are forced to choose the lesser of two evils.  When no choice is a good choice, at least maybe one could be a better choice.  We often meander through life in this way, making acceptable choices given a buffet of choices, some good, some bad.  Then, as in a game of chess, we sacrifice a good choice for a bad one, because sometimes the risk of a bad choice is acceptable.  Just like sacrificing a pawn to get in a position to take a better piece, a rook, perhaps.

Our goal, in life, is to make good choices more often than bad, and to delineate the lesser of two evils and choose that one, and to weigh the consequences of a bad choice and decide if it is worth making.  Most people, I would guess, make decent choices.  But I wonder, too, what makes a choice decent?  If I benefit from a choice, is it then a good choice?  Ideally, and I'm really only postulating since I just don't know what the right answer really is, or if there even IS one, a person should settle on a choice that benefits one's self while not infringing on someone else's ability to make good choices.

I would like to think of this as the meaning of life:  to be faced with a cavalcade of choices and always try to choose either the best ethical option or the lesser of evils.  Depending on your particular religious belief, if we are to be judged upon death, those choices become extremely important--in fact, it is what we are being judged against.  And even though it's a BIG no-no, let's face it, we judge the hell out of others too.  How people view you is wholly based on what choices you have made and how predictable you will be when you are confronted with a future decision.  When we feel that we can predict, with some level of accuracy, what someone else's choice in a given matter will be, we feel like we know them.  We are comfortable with them.  Our entire life is defined by the choices we make, is what I guess I'm saying.  And we choose to be close with people that would make similar choices.

When they are cornered and must make the best choice among bad options, it is then that we see a person's mettle, it is then that a leader can be born, or a will can be shattered.  Decisions can be tough sometimes, and hindsight can always force someone to second guess, no matter the choice.

So the clock is ticking.  Choose wisely.  Look at the big picture and never, under ANY circumstances, get into a situation where you must decide who gets blown up.