Where does my duty lie?

[Malperdy]

At a beach one day I leave my young child playing to go for a short walk up the sand hills. When I turn and look out to sea from higher ground I find to my alarm that a large tsunami is heading for the beach and is only minutes away. My child is some distance to my left, still playing, and I also see to my right five fishermen working on some nets not far from the water’s edge. They are not looking in my direction and it is too far to hear my warning shouts.

I have just enough time to scramble through the sand hill vegetation down to the beach. If I run in one direction I can save my child whose whole life is still before them. If I run in the other direction I can save the five men, each of whom has a family to support. I cannot save both.

A hypothetical scenario, of course, but not an improbable one. Where does my duty lie? To save my young child, or to save the five men? And why ought I to do the one thing and not the other?

 

[marty1818]

I would say the child. Your child would be counting on you to look after them the five fishermen are not.They are adults and should be able to take care of themselves.

 

[Tietjen]

At a beach one day I leave my young child playing to go for a short walk up the sand hills. When I turn and look out to sea from higher ground I find to my alarm that a large tsunami is heading for the beach and is only minutes away. My child is some distance to my left, still playing, and I also see to my right five fishermen working on some nets not far from the water’s edge. They are not looking in my direction and it is too far to hear my warning shouts.

I have just enough time to scramble through the sand hill vegetation down to the beach. If I run in one direction I can save my child whose whole life is still before them. If I run in the other direction I can save the five men, each of whom has a family to support. I cannot save both.

A hypothetical scenario, of course, but not an improbable one. Where does my duty lie? To save my young child, or to save the five men? And why ought I to do the one thing and not the other?

Assuming all information has been included and there is no one to send in the direction of the fishermen, your responsibility is to your child. God trusted you with her protection and while in different circumstances you might be obliged to assist the fishermen, in this rather bleak scenario, you do not have the ability to do so AND protect the child which God has entrusted you with.

 

[GraceDK]

I’d say: do both.
Jesus calmed the storm on the sea and when all the men got scared and bewildered He blamingly said: “do you still have no faith?”.
So I’d go for my kid to whom I have an infinite duty and then to the five men while I prayed hard to God asking Him to hold back the tsunami until all 7 of us were safe. Your job is to do what you can… God will do the rest.

 

[rwoehmke]

Run down to the beach either to your child or to the fishermen and you are all going to drown or die. Tsunami’s move so rapidly that if you see it coming it is too late to get down to the beach and back.

 

[Ted_in_Charlott]

The Child. The fishermen have boats. (Sorry, had to say it )

 

[Mirror_Mirror]

You have a duty to check the weather forecast before going to the beach.

(sorry had to be said)

I think that this was the best post of them all. I agree.

GraceDK:

I’d say: do both.
Jesus calmed the storm on the sea and when all the men got scared and bewildered He blamingly said: “do you still have no faith?”.
So I’d go for my kid to whom I have an infinite duty and then to the five men while I prayed hard to God asking Him to hold back the tsunami until all 7 of us were safe. Your job is to do what you can… God will do the rest.

 

[Malperdy]

Assuming all information has been included and there is no one to send in the direction of the fishermen, your responsibility is to your child. God trusted you with her protection and while in different circumstances you might be obliged to assist the fishermen, in this rather bleak scenario, you do not have the ability to do so AND protect the child which God has entrusted you with.

Thank you for that thoughtful answer. Where I have said duty you say responsibility. I wonder which of these has the greater force, the greater compulsion.

To expand my scenario a little. I (the actor in my story who is faced with the awful decision) am aware that the five men have families who are utterly dependent upon them for their livelihood and wellbeing, including some children as young as my own child. As I rush down to the beach I consider what to do.

Here is my next question.

Does my duty to save the one outweigh my duty to save the many?

 

[gardenswithkids]

At a beach one day I leave my young child playing to go for a short walk up the sand hills. …

I realize this is just a hypothetical situation, however… **Don’t leave a young child playing alone on the beach while you take a walk! ** Young children can wonder off in a split second into the water and drown even without a tsunami. If you are too far away to save your child and the fishermen in this hypothetical scenario, you were too far away from your child at the beach.

 

[thistle]

At a beach one day I leave my young child playing to go for a short walk up the sand hills. When I turn and look out to sea from higher ground I find to my alarm that a large tsunami is heading for the beach and is only minutes away. My child is some distance to my left, still playing, and I also see to my right five fishermen working on some nets not far from the water’s edge. They are not looking in my direction and it is too far to hear my warning shouts.

I have just enough time to scramble through the sand hill vegetation down to the beach. If I run in one direction I can save my child whose whole life is still before them. If I run in the other direction I can save the five men, each of whom has a family to support. I cannot save both.

A hypothetical scenario, of course, but not an improbable one. Where does my duty lie? To save my young child, or to save the five men? And why ought I to do the one thing and not the other?

These hypothetical scenarios are simply stupid. Your first responsibility (given to you by God) is ALWAYS to your child.

 

[Della]

Thank you for that thoughtful answer. Where I have said duty you say responsibility. I wonder which of these has the greater force, the greater compulsion.

To expand my scenario a little. I (the actor in my story who is faced with the awful decision) am aware that the five men have families who are utterly dependent upon them for their livelihood and wellbeing, including some children as young as my own child. As I rush down to the beach I consider what to do.

Here is my next question.

Does my duty to save the one outweigh my duty to save the many?

You need to rewrite this scene. I’m a writer too and have to decide when an idea is working and when it isn’t. Your readers would be more peeved with you as a writer than wondering over the impossible dilemma you wish to create. I say scrap it and start with a more plausible scenario.

 

[juliamca]

You must not have children or you would not even concider asking such a stupid question. Good parents would not have left a child on the beach alone in the first place. Your childs safety is always first in your mind. There would be no conflict to think about.

 

[rwoehmke]

Just what was the point of creating this scenario? As some previous posters said. letting your child play near the water while you wonder up the dunes is the height of child neglect. It takes a very short time to drown or be in the water not able to breath for long enough to have brain damage. What kind of dummy parent are we talking about?

 

[Malperdy]

A hypothetical scenario, used here, is only a method for teasing out certain aspects of moral decision making. Nothing more. It is typically limited in scope, whereas real life is typically more complex. It does not matter if my scenario is a tsunami at the beach, or an avalanche in the mountains, or a runaway vehicle, or some other event. This scenario involves two groups of persons placed in grave danger and my having the opportunity to save one group but not both. I am interested in exploring the concept of duty by using purely imaginary scenarios. That is all there is to it. So, can we stop the accusations of bad parenting or clumsy story telling, and move on?

My question is about where my duty lies when I am faced with making a decision in a life-threatening situation to save one or to save another (or others). I have not defined duty, so I shall offer this definition:

Duty is the moral obligation to do something or to omit to do something.

Clearly, I have a duty to preserve human life. And that extends to preserving the life of others whenever I am able to do so.

(1) When my child is in a life-threatening situation my natural compulsion is to seek to preserve their life. All parents would agree. But compulsion is not the same as duty. Parental compulsion here, as one poster has pointed out, arises also from God-given responsibility.

So it seems that we can frame a notion of duty (preservation of life) to our child which conforms to that responsibility (parenting). And that’s great.

I dare say that most in CAF-world would want to say that it would not matter if the choice was between saving their child and saving five other persons, or saving fifty others. Is that an outrageous thought? No, before I get more brickbats, I cannot offer a real-life situation, and thank goodness for that. But that need not prevent us from thinking carefully about the issues.

(2) Suppose the choice was not between my child and five men, but between saving a good friend and saving a stranger who are both equally in danger. Where does my duty lie?

(3) Finally, and by extension from (2) above, where does my duty lie when I must decide (hypothetically, remember) between saving persons chosen from different groups like the following?

• my immediate family
• my extended family
• close friends
• mere acquaintances
• strangers

Why ought I to choose a person or persons from one of these groups over a person or persons from another group?

 

[brandymmiller]

Does my duty to save the one outweigh my duty to save the many?

The five you are considering saving are grown adults responsible for their own safety. There are five chances among those grown adults that at least one of them will use their knowledge of the sea and their senses to alert them to the danger they are in. Furthermore, they are also likely to know how to take proper action to protect themselves from harm.

Your child does not have sufficient life experience to be aware of either the warning signs or the nature of the danger she is in. Nor does she know how to protect herself even if she did notice the danger. Your duty is clear: save the child.