Moral Dilemmas

Throughout our lives, we need to make important decisions. Often, our desicions determine our lives, our wealth and even our credit. Everytime we are faced with those important problems, we tend to ponder about them seriously. But why do we ponder about the problems? Why do we spend so much time thinking about the problems? Well, there are many reasons for the phenomenon but it's mostly because of 'moral dilemmas'.

I recently read a book called  'Justice' by Micheal Sendal, the professor of Harvard University who became a professor at a very young age. In his book, he explained about moral dilemmas. Today I'm going to introduce two of them to you.

Four sailors were lost in the middle of the sea. One of them was a 19-year-old boy and other sailors were all adults. Nobody came to rescue them for several days. They did not have enough food and could not stand anymore. Eventually, even if one of the sailors disapproved with the point, the captain of the ship decided to kill the boy, who was very sick at that time, and eat his flesh. After a few days, the three sailors were rescued and the people who successfully saved the sailors found a corpse of a boy which was half-eaten.

A few decades ago, hurricane swept Florida, a city in the United States, and many people lost their houses, money and even their families because of the brutal hurricane. To make the matters worse, the stores and factories in the town increased the price of products which were essential to the survivors. The survivors became very angry but they had no other choice. They needed to buy food and tools. As the result, the merchants earned a lot of money and survivors became poorer.

Are the behaviours of the merchants and sailors justifiable?This may be an extremely difficult question for most people since they are pretty complicated. Let me explain about the first moral dilemma. Think about it, the sailors who survived insisted that all the four sailors might have died in the middle of the sea if they had not eaten anything. But they had sibling, parents and children who fed on the fishes they brought home. They might think, 'my children and parents will all die soon if I do not return home with fishes. So I have to be alive.' For the reason, the sailors' behaviour is justifiable on one hand. But on the other hand, it is not. The four sailors are 'fellows' who worked together, had a meal together and spent difficult time together. They should not eat the flesh of their fellow by all means. They rather needed to take care of the young sailor and wait patiently for a helping hand together.

As we can know through the two examples above, moral dilemmas are pretty difficult to solve. But all of us have to be faced with many moral dilemmas throughout our lives. Therefore, it is important to deal with the problems wisely and make the best decisions for the situations.