This semester I enrolled in my first ethics class, and to be honest it has been a lot different than I expected. Until I took this class I never really thought that much into the inner workings of an argument. To me it seemed pretty simple: Be convincing, and people will listen. Until I took this class I also never thought about what I would do if a boat was sinking and I could choose to throw people over and save the rest (myself included) or let us all go under. In my class I had the unpopular opinion, but I wanted to share this scenario with the rest of the world…
Say you're on a ship that is sinking. There is a terrible storm with high winds, and people must start evacuating the ship. There are two lifeboats, and the captain and his best crew hop on one of the boats. The one they chose is in perfect condition. This leaves you and 29 other people with a lifeboat that has holes and is old and falling apart. You all pile into the boat, but with 30 people the boat isn’t going to make it. You can choose to throw 15 overboard and you will make it to shore safely, or you can choose to do nothing and all 30 people will die. What would you do?
The majority of the class agreed that killing 15 people was better than killing 30 and that they would throw the people over in order to save the rest. I disagreed with them because I didn’t want to have a hand in deciding who should live and who should die. I guess I don’t see how we can justify whose life is more important than someone else's. I would hope for volunteers or for someone else to throw people over so I didn’t have to.
While I understand this scenario will most likely never occur, thinking about this made me think about how we value human lives. For me, it would be hard to value my own life over anyone else’s. What makes someone “more special” than another?
