Death and Life

A while back, Tyler got me to sign up for okcupid, a free internet dating site with lots of fun tests. One of the tests included a series of questions:
• If you could save someone by killing yourself, would you?
• If you could save 50 people by killing yourself, would you?
• If you could save 10,000 people by killing yourself, would you?
My honest answer (I believe) to each of these questions was “no”. I think it goes back to the idea that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself, but my survival instinct is just too strong. I can’t imagine ever being that noble.

Or am I? You know how on the airplane, you’re always supposed to put your own mask on first before you assist others? It makes sense to me that if anyone needs saving, I would like to be there to actively do it. How do you know that your death will be effective in saving others?

Tina said it would depend on who it was. If it was her sister, then she would definitely die for her. If it was someone else, she’s less sure. But suppose Tina is on a boat with her sister and her sister falls off the boat. Tina jumping off the boat isn’t going to help anything, because then neither of them can get back on the boat. Tina’s sister would need to take some active measure to save herself by, say, swimming to the boat and pulling herself onto it.

The examples of the oxygen mask and the boat resonate most with me. They seem most like how the world works. On This American Life this week, the topic was “who can you save?” All the stories were fascinating. One was about a thought experiment like this: if you could save 4 men by flipping a switch that kills another one instead, would you? If you could save 4 men by actively killing another (pushing him off a bridge), would you? Most people say yes to the first and no to the second. This is odd since they are essentially the same thing.

A researcher asked people these questions while performing a brain scan on them. He found that different areas of the people’s brains fired more for each question, indicating that whichever biological reaction is louder is the one we obey (his hypothesis).

I feel profoundly troubled by the idea of actively killing another person by any mechanism. I am troubled by any association between choice and death. In high school, when everything was SO DEEP I read a book where people described their near-death experiences. They described a white light and dead loved ones calling to them from the other side. I think I remember a story where a dead loved on told the narrator to go back; that this isn’t the right time.

My mother says that my grandmother didn’t want to die when she did, but her body, and perhaps her family, gave up on her. Other times, you hear stories about people with relatively minor injuries going to the other side anyway. Decisions about life and death are profoundly personal. I don’t believe that I would be the right one to make a decision for another person, or 50 people, or 10,000 people, and yet, at the same time, I believe it is the responsibility of everyone in a community (in the form of social services) to facilitate life.