An atypical Ethics question/problem from college

[Sporko]

I was looking through some old files recently and found a short paper I wrote for my ethics class. It only had to be a paragraph but I had fun writing it and ended up wroting a page.

I'll post my answer in a second, but some of you might end up having fun with this so feel free to post what you'd have done.

Here's the gist of the problem as I don't have the original copy of the assignment sheet.

You and three of your fellow classmates are on a two week cruise. Three days into the cruise, the ship is bombed by a terrorist and sinks. A small number of people make it to a liferaft, but there are ten people on it including yourself and your three classmates, and only enough food and water for 7 people to have any hope of reaching land. I don't remember the reasoning but I *think* you were not allowed to choose yourself or any of your three classmates as people who had to go. I could be wrong about that but I don't think I am. So you can answer however you want, following those rules or not, I"m not really concerned.

On the liferaft is you and your three classmates, as well as the following people

-The terrorist who blew up the ship. He does not speak your language, and his arms are mangled and unusable, however he is a trained survivalist and fisherman.
-A twelve year old mentally disabled boy whose mother died on the ship but his father, who wasn't on the ship, is extremely wealthy.
-A somewhat jittery man with a survival knife and a broken radio transmitter, but has extreme issues with authority and not being in charge and is slightly unstable.
-An extreme, fundamentalist Christian whackjob who has experience using and fixing radio equipment but will not cooperate if the terrorist is allowed to stay.
-A nurse who, obviously, has medical experience but is also an extreme drug addict going through equally extreme withdrawls
-an old, senile college professor who only has brief moments of lucidity but who also knows how to navigate by the stars.

Three of those people have to go to ensure the survival of everybody, and you have to argue which would be, in your opinion, the most ethical choices as to who would or would not go. There is no right or wrong answers so long as you can provide a somewhat decent argument for why you made the choices you did.

I'll post my paper in a second, which got an A and was *really* fun to write, heh.

 

[Sporko]

An atypical Ethics question/problem from colle

It's a terrible tragedy, that. What, with the explosion and all. Boat didn't stand much of a chance, truth be told. The concussive force of the blast has a way of "persuading" the hull of a ship to open up for it. I think it can be stated with some measure of certainty that it's when one is on the water that they *least* want their vessel riddled with gaping holes. I cursed myself for my hasty decision to take a getaway cruise, but $79.99 for a two week cruise? $79.99!?? Really, was there any other decision I could have made in that situation? No, and I stand by that. What I regret most, however, was my ...um...*other* hasty decision. Seeing as how only three of my ethical companions and classmates could accompany me, I had to think of some fair and equitable way to resolve the situation. That being said, I decided to chop up the class in its entirety and stich together three ghoulish, god-forsaken monstrosities from the amalgamated parts that remained. We would all equally share in this endeavor! Save for me, I suppose. I'd share extra. When all is considered, I probably did get the best of that deal. Hindsight being 20/20, and all that.

Anyway, here we are floating in a lifeboat meandering aimlessly towards nowhere at all in particular. There's me, horrendous abomination#1, horrendous abomination #2, horrendous abomination #3, the nurse, the slow child, the twitchy guy, the spaced out old broad, the fundamentalist whackjob and good ol' shark food. Who is he, you might ask? Yeah, he's the guy who thought 15lbs of plastique +6 timed detonators=72 virgins. He never was very good at math. And boy did he have egg and guts on *his* face. Though, that was six or seven minutes ago, back when he still had a face. Those sharks don't leave much behind. Now, to be fair, we had no way of knowing at the time that he was a trained survivalist and fisherman. We didn't speak each others languages and his arms were mangled and broken, so he really couldn't even pantomime a fishing motion. Though, that wouldn't have mattered all that much. Simply put, he had to go.

It was I who first realized that there was only enough fresh water for seven people to survive long enough to have any chance of finding land. Now, the logical person might say, "Why not rid yourself of those walking, decaying organ sacks that used to be your friends and be done with it," to which I would reply that I used to know "them" and that I am simply a sentimental old fool. A frighteningly disturbed, sentimental old fool. Using my cadaverous cohorts as simple thugs, I enforced my will on others so that I might make the most ethical decision regarding what to do with their lives. Obviously I couldn't go as I was, am and forever will be far too beautiful and talented to leave this world deprived of my presence. I set out to remove those that offered the least to our continued chance of survival, or had some other defect of character or mind that would somehow lessen their ontological status on the hypothetical ontological totem pole, of sorts. The young boy's only potential contribution to the group was the off chance that his wealthy father might send some sort of search party to scour the seas for a sign of his dear ol' boy, but he would send that search party regardless of what decision I had to make. The fact that his mental defect might hinder the others in our bid to survive Poseidons wrath, or that another castaway might better contribute to a prolonged wilderness survival effort than the boy could with his limited capabilities meant his continued survival was a detriment to *our* continued survival as a group. It was a tear jerking moment, but my zombie goons dispatched the child, leaving him in the ocean. It was immediately after I had made my decision to sacrifice the boy so that the rest might live when my second choice was made for me. Twitchy seems to have a little "problem" with my authority, and thinks a knife can stop my patchwork corpse brigade. Note: It can't. So overboard he went. He obviously proved himself to be a danger to others ( namely me), but nobody can say he didn't pose that same risk to the others. Primarily because if they said that (or anything akin to that) my rotting legion would quickly put an end to that.

Once they fell in line, the rest of the crew and I got along quite well. My minions used their extra arms to paddle the boat in the direction that the aging professor directed them, while the nurse sewed their parts back on when they began to fall off. The fundie fixed our radio, thus forever ensuring a place for her in my heart. Ironically, this took up the space in my heart I had previously allotted for Jesus. I told her that, and while we were rescued eventually, from what I hear that fact shattered her soul to the very core and she's living in some sort of institution now. C'est la vie. The nurse, entirely unnerved from the ordeal, went back to drugs and from what I hear has never been happier or more dishevelled. The kindly old professor returned home, got tenure, left again, returned home, forgot she had tenure, called and quit and then drove to Vegas where she married a rice queen named Hitoshi. My time at sea was tense, nerve-wracking, and filled with peril, but it taught me a lesson I'll never forget. Never take a cruise cheaper than $99.99.

 

[Marginal]

An atypical Ethics question/problem from colle

Funny that you are stuck with three apparently useless people you can't remove.

-Terrorist goes. On top of still being a threat, he can't communicate, or really move. His skills aren't usable. +The jittery man would be nice to remove, but with the knife and all, safely removing him would probably be difficult.
-The senile professor goes. His navigational skills would be unreliable at best.
-Kid. He's not useful. Only reasons to keep him are pity or hope that his dad will reward you later.
+Fundie. He can fix jitter's radio. (Probably won't be happy about flushing the kid tho.)
+Nurse. No reason to remove her since three already got booted. She probably won't be eating much either way.