This is the situation he outlines: Suppose you are at a train station and you see a trolley car hurtling towards five people working on the track. You feel helpless as the trolley inches closer to the group, until you notice a lever by your side. [break]
By pulling the lever, you can divert the trolley to a sidetrack where there is just one person at work. What would you do? Pull the lever and divert the trolley onto the sidetrack so that five lives can be saved at the cost of one? When Sandel posed this question to his students, the majority of the hands went up.
Sandel upped the ante. In the second scenario the same trolley is barreling down towards five people. But this time, you are on an overhead bridge on the path of the advancing trolley.
You notice a fat man leaning over the bridge. If you push the fat man off the bridge and on the way of the trolley, you know for sure that the fat man’s body will stop the trolley, again saving five lives. Would you push the fat man over? This time far fewer hands were raised.
Although from a utilitarian perspective the two situations are identical (involving the sacrifice of one life to save five), for most people the introduction of ‘human agency’ (the fat man) is the game changer. It’s much easier to pull an inanimate lever than to push over a living human being to his death by your own hands.
Sandel’s cases are hypothetical, but we face many real moral dilemmas in the course of our everyday lives.
Once, a young man boarded an empty bus at Patan. But in 10 minutes, every seat was taken. In this crowded space in walked an old, stooping lady.
As luck would have it she would go on to stand right next to the comfortably seated young man. Out of courtesy, he got up, asking the old lady to take the seat. No monsieur, she didn’t thank him. In fact, she absolutely lost it: “You think I’m incapable of standing even for five minutes? You’re so arrogant because you think you’re young and have all the energy. We oldies don’t, right!”
On another occasion he was traveling in a Safa tempo from Sundhara to Teenkune. When the tempo was near New Baneshwor Chowk, another old dame sitting beside him abruptly got up and started shouting at the driver to stop. The driver calmly replied that he would have to pay a hefty fine if he did. But dear old granny didn’t seem to give a fig about traffic rules.
Instead, she resorted to emotional blackmailing: Would the driver make an old, frail woman walk an extra five minutes? When it didn’t work, she started hammering away at the tin ceiling with her upturned wrist, cursing the driver with every Nepali swearword imaginable.
Although the majority of people might support the idea of giving up a seat for the elderly and stopping only at designated spots, can the arguments of the two old ladies be dismissed out of hand? Given the mental and physical burdens of old age, don’t they deserve special consideration?
Difficult moral issues are at play even in (what are for Nepalis) garden-variety news. In Wednesday’s papers, there was news of medical professionals in Chitwan shutting down local hospitals indefinitely in response to a physical assault on a doctor accused of negligence in his duty.
Was it right of the medical professionals to put the lives of countless people on the line to secure their (legitimate) right to work in an intimidation-free environment?
Another bit of news concerned the government’s preparations to provide various amenities to former VIPs. Former heads of state, besides countless other facilities, will get Rs 50,000 in monthly apartment allowances.
Are such rich perks for the privileged justified when, according to another news report the same day, free bonded laborers in Western Nepal are struggling to construct little huts for themselves?
In fact, there are moral minefields all around us. Shouldn’t we take every step with care lest we trample on innocent insects? Should we mercilessly splat mosquitoes? Should we consume meat?
How about vegetables, which also come from living things? Keep probing the rationale behind each and every one of your moral judgment and you soon reach a point when, like Hamlet, you start questioning your very existence: To be, or not to be, that is the question. Oftentimes you would be advised to make a pick between the moral options swirling inside your head, even if it might not be the right choice in the final analysis, rather than chip away at your sanity.
The writer is the op-ed editor at Republica.
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