Sometimes it happens: we are offered to make a painful choice when both options are worse. Or both are better. And this choice may seem necessary and uncontested. Otherwise, someone innocent will surely suffer, and the highest justice will be violated.
Whom to help — a sick child or a sick adult? Before such a tearing soul choice puts the viewer advertising a charitable foundation. On whom to spend budget money — on seriously ill patients or on those who are still healthy? Such a cruel dilemma is proposed by a member of the Public Chamber. Sometimes it happens: we are offered to make a painful choice when both options are worse. Or both are better. And this choice may seem necessary and uncontested. Otherwise, someone innocent will surely suffer, and the highest justice will be violated.
But, having made this choice, in any case you will be wrong and in relation to someone you will turn out to be a monster. Are you for helping children? And who then will help adults? Ah, you are for helping adults… So, let the children suffer?! What kind of monster are you! This choice divides people into two camps — offended and monstrous. Representatives of each camp consider themselves offended, and opponents — monstrous.
- Why is it good to take a step back?
In high school, I had a classmate, Lenya G., who liked to pose such moral dilemmas to fifth graders. “If bandits break into your house, who will you not let them kill — mom or dad?” asked the young soul tester, looking inquisitively at his confused interlocutor. “If they give you a million, will you agree to throw your dog off the roof?” — Leni’s questions tested your values, or, as they said at school, they took you on a show off. In our class, he was a popular person, so he received pleasure from the moral torment of classmates with almost impunity. And when he continued his humanitarian experiments in parallel classes, then someone gave him a kick, and Leni G.’s research escalated into a class conflict involving high school students.
The next time I faced a painful choice was when I was learning how to conduct psychological training. We had, among other things, group games that posed moral dilemmas. Now, if you choose who to give money to cure cancer — a young genius who will figure out how to save humanity in the future, or a middle-aged professor who is already working on it, then who? If you are escaping from a sinking ship, who will you take on the last boat? The point of these games was, as I recall, to test the group for effectiveness in making decisions. In our group, cohesion with efficiency for some reason immediately fell — the participants argued until they were hoarse. And the hosts only urged: until you can decide, the ship is sinking, and the young genius is dying.
- Time to make a decision
It may seem that life itself dictates the need for such a choice. That you will definitely have to choose whom to allow to kill — mom or dad. Or who to spend money from the budget of one of the most resource-rich countries in the world. But here it is important to pay attention: with what voice does life suddenly begin to dictate? And these voices and formulations are somehow suspiciously similar in their effect on people. For some reason, they do not help to do better, do not seek new opportunities and perspectives. They narrow the prospects, and close the possibilities. And this people are disoriented and frightened, on the one hand. And on the other hand, they put people in a special role that can cause excitement and even excitement — the role of the one who decides fate. The one who thinks on behalf of the state or humanity, who is more valuable and more important for them — children, adults, mothers, fathers, seriously ill or still healthy. And then value conflicts begin, people begin to be friends against and enmity for. And the person who dictates the choice, supposedly on behalf of life, gets the role of such a shadow leader — in some ways a gray cardinal and Karabas-Barabas. He provoked people to emotions and conflicts, forced them to take an unequivocal and extreme position. To some extent, it was as if he checked them, tested them for values, what they are — he took them on a value show.
A painful choice is such a wandering plot that refracts reality in a certain way. These are glasses through which we can see only two options, no more. And we must choose only one, these are the rules of the game, which were established by the one who put these glasses on you. At one time, psychologist Daniel Kahneman and colleagues conducted studies that showed that wording influences people’s choice. For example, if a choice is offered — to save 200 people out of 600 from an epidemic or lose 400 people out of 600, then people choose the first. The only difference is in the wording. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for his research in behavioral economics. It’s hard to believe that words can have such an impact on how we make choices. And it turns out that the need for a tough choice is dictated to us not so much by life as by the words with which we describe it. And there are words with which you can gain power over the emotions and behavior of people. But if life is difficult to ask critical questions or even refuse, then it is quite possible for a person who undertakes to dictate something on her behalf.