Imagine a situation.
You are standing at a railway. In front of you a train is
coming fast and there seems to be no way to stop it. On the track there are 5
kids playing with no knowledge of the coming train. And on the other track
there is a man standing. Besides you there is a switch. If you pull the switch,
the train will turn and run over the man. If you do not, the train will kill
the kids.
What will you do?
You will kill the man to save the kids, or you ignore
everything and just let it happen?
Make no mistake, 5 kids is surely a better bet than 1 man alone.
Shall we pull the switch?
I do not believe most of us will do this easily because we
will all face a question:
“Which behavior is more moral here?”
Our society is result-oriented. We judge, value, rank
ourselves based on result, which means behaviors. If you do things correctly, you
are good. Otherwise, you are bad. If you kill the man in the above situation,
theoretically, you are doing a good thing because there is no way a life of one
man is worth more than 5. And then you will live the rest of your life with the
guilty of killing a man.
I myself believe that behaviors is just not enough to judge
a person’s morality. We are taught that lying is a sin, and it is forbidden.
However, a doctor lies to comfort his victims in their last days. A prison
guard gives the criminals last meal before his death penalty. A coach lies to
motivate his teammate before an unbalanced game. We lie to ourselves every day
to feel better.
What we do, what we behave does not matter 100%. What we
think, what we intend is much more important. Life is not always easy.
Sometimes, we cannot give seat on a bus to an old person because we are too
tired too. Sometimes, we have a white lie. Sometimes, we have to do stuff that
we do not want to do. Sometimes, we hope that people will understand our real
intents, not our behaviors.
And will we forgive other people’s behaviors?
Kz
