The ethical dilemma is well known to us. Given a paucity of
lifeboats, and a plethora of people, who survives? Who lives, and who
dies?
It is easy to get lost in the abstractness of this dilemma. It
is easy to immediately begin to rationalize the abstractness of the
arguments, to worry about the rightness or wrongness of possible
situations, as we sit on dry land. But imagine the sheer terror of
living in a place where your...where your survival depends
on getting on the boat. Perhaps a padlocked gate lies between you and a
chance. Perhaps economic forces put up that gate, and the first class
gets the first 75 seats out of a hundred.
The Earth we live on is a tenuous lifeboat, and we are surrounded by
countless drowning victims. We are surviving, you and I, on a boat built
for seventy, in a sea of dying thousands. If we turn around, we might
very well get swamped by the masses, clamoring for the edges. If we
don't turn around, what will they think of us when we get back to shore?
Thousands. It is a number that is difficult to visualize, whether it is
hashmarks on paper, or dollars, or people. Thousands is a wall
that is too high to climb. Let alone millions.
I do believe, however, with all the force of my soul, that in small
compartments, thousands can be broken down into hundreds, and then into
tens. Together, the human race can tackle the difficult issues - of
poverty, destitution, and concomitant disease. Singly it is hopeless,
but broken down into parts, and as a joint effort, we can beat this. You
and I.
Sacrifice. Hah.
I feign sacrifice every day of my life. I plead support of orphaned
children, but I have free access to a vehicle that runs on fuel that
costs at least half of what it does for the rest of the world. I can
travel to anywhere in my country, and simply swipe a plastic card to get
there. You and I live in a world where not only do we have "dispensable
income," but we spend it on video games, renting a movie at Blockbuster,
or to be fair, making it in our own difficult world.
My point: We have choices, and when push comes to shove, we likely
might shove someone out of the way in order for our own to survive. I
would argue that our globe has shrunken, and there are none who are not
our own. We are all in the same boat together.
More importantly, it is not necessary that our boat get swamped in
order to pick up survivors. For a relative pittance, a dime out of every
ten dollars, we can give every person in the water a grasp on the ladder
that will give them a chance. It is up to them to grab on, hold on, and
pull out, but it is we that have the opportunity to drop the ladder.
How
can we not?
