Morality.

We think we are all people with good moral values. That we function as per ethical code of conduct. But in reality this is not how we operate.

A good example of this would be “The trolley problem” :

You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up people lying on the tracks. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track.

You have two options:

1. Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.

2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

Which is the more ethical option? What would you do?

If you think logically then lives of 5 people is more valuable than life of one. So morally speaking, it should be obvious to pull the lever and move the trolley to the side track. But psychologists argue that most would choose to not do anything and let the trolley run over 5.

Why? Because when 5 people get killed, you won’t directly be responsible for it, they would have died if you were not there at all. But if you pulled the lever, you would directly feel responsible for the death of one.

You see how to avoid being held responsible, we choose inaction over saving lives. This is also observable when a fight is happening in a public area and most onlookers choose to stay away, because they fear getting slapped in the process of stopping the fight.

It can also be observed why many ignore an injured person on road instead of taking him to the hospital because they fear that maybe this person did something wrong or is drunk or is not in a stable mental state.

We justify not doing anything in the face of what would have been morally correct to do. We claim to have ethics and all but all we seek and do is what is best in our own self interest.

A bit of inconvenience and doubt in our head and we choose to ignore and not get involved.

It is unfortunate that morality in human behavior is a disappearing trait and all we are driven by is the interest of self.

If you still think you are different and do act morally whenever possible, I can bet you won’t pull the lever in the trolley experiment either. Inaction is what you’ll choose. If you do somehow pull the lever then you’d feel the guilt for it, not so much if the trolley had run over 5.

How would we feel (guilty or otherwise) is all we care about.

We are selfish beings and in being so morality loses out.

-ChoubeySahab