Words of Life: An Enduring Legacyනියැදිය

Right choices.

‘Standing on a railway footbridge next to a 20-stone stranger, you see a runaway trolley heading towards a group of five men who are preoccupied while working on the track. Because of other noises, they wouldn’t hear you shouting. However, if you pushed the large man off the bridge immediately, his bulk would stop the trolley below ploughing into the men. Five lives would be saved, but the stranger would probably be killed. What do you do?’ asks Professor Joshua Greene of Harvard University.

He then relocates the situation so that you are now at the railway control centre and can divert the runaway trolley to a track where only one man is working. Again, five would be saved, but one will be killed. Do you press the switch?

According to Greene, the majority of people say they wouldn’t push the large man off the bridge, but they would press the switch. What are the factors involved in making this moral judgement, and does the sense of the rights of others influence our choice? Why does pushing the man feel more ‘wrong’ than deciding to switch railway points resulting in a single worker being killed? Could it be that the more direct the infliction of harm, the more repugnant it feels?

One could further complicate Greene’s dilemma by suggesting that one of the people in danger is a relative or close friend. How would that influence our decision?

Greene, in his book Moral Tribes, considers frontal and lower lobe brain activity, emotional reactions and cognitive control, and a range of philosophical arguments in an attempt to understand our sense of right and wrong. He concludes that choices should be for the greatest advantage of everyone involved.

As we read in today’s Scripture, Jesus gave us similar advice. He gives us a daily challenge to be considerate of others. Pause and think – if we wouldn’t like a particular course of action to happen to us, we probably should do what we can to prevent others experiencing what we might have gone through.