That reminds me, sometime this year(or was it last year?), something heroic happened. A petrol tank caught fire, but the driver did not stop the vehicle in the middle of the road and run off. He kept driving, even with the knowledge that explosion could occur any moment, until he drove it to a location he must have thought safe before getting off. By this time, the entire vehicle was in flames. I still wonder how he survived.
You know, if he hadn't done what he did, the result would have been ghastly. Houses, shops, people, would have been caught up in flames. The road was, by my observation, not a major road, but a small one in the streets. Too cramped and narrow.
When I saw that video, I thought about what must have been running through the driver's mind when he did what he did. I thought about what prompted him to do what he did?
Online, even offline, people hailed him. He did noble. That was very brave. People kept talking about how people like him are the kinds that we need in our country.
That incident, as this prompt asks, very clearly depicts a person who would sacrifice himself so that many others would live. And he, he did that for strangers, without thinking how heartbroken and what would become of his household if he had died. That's selflessness. Sacrifice in the highest order.
However, I asked the people around me who commended him, even myself - how many of us would have done the same? How many of us would not run off, cause, we deserve to live too? How many of us would give ourselves for our loved ones(less so, strangers)? How many of us would want to be part of the man's kind that we say we need more in our society?
I tell you, not many of us, what am I even saying? I mean, only but a few, even when posed with the question and not a reality, could agree to be that kind of sacrificial lamb. Who doesn't want to live? Even people who wish for death for themselves run away crying when face-to-face with it.
I think, though, too, that the question here should be, "Should you do it?" not "would you do it.""
Each situation, as with each individual placed in that situation, has a different set of parameters as well as reactions.
Before I started to write on this topic, I went to one of my big brothers, as I did when I couldn't get myself to sit through the thinking and asked what he would do.
He reply did not come as a direct answer, just a scenario.
He said that if a doctor had a number of patients with each needing: a heart transplant, a lung transplant, and a kidney transplant. And say a man who is otherwise healthy save for minor fever which he has come to the doctor to get help, what should the doctor do? Should he kill the man and give his healthy organs to those who need them, cause, potentially, he's saved them. Like, one went down for three to keep living.
And I thought how silly it would be. How morally wrong it is to sacrifice a life to save another.
But no one person can answer it for the moral conscience of anyone else.
This isn't a question that can be answered solidly by any one person because morality isn't absolute.
In any case, I will be compelled to ask questions. Questions on the people involved(which is a determinant) and what gains or implications for agreeing or not would be.
In any scenario, I can imagine the answers to these questions would be enough to make my decision. In a scenario more abstract than that, i really don't know what I would do, but I would try to maximize years of happiness for all.
The only category of people that I think might pull this off, not so easily either, would be parents, very elderly people, and maybe those who are terribly sick and/or tired of living. Even then, it wouldn't be an easy do.
I don't even get why anyone should be sacrificed so others can live better. Maybe for my family, I can pull that. Still,if I had to judge be how roughly the present economic and overall life situation is to each and every irrespective of status, I would just decide that we should all just keep doing what we've been doing to survive.
Why would I even be the one to determine who is worthy of living and who is not? Makes no sense. My opinion.
Thanks for gracing this post.
Greetings!