Questions of Ethics

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Corkey

While we've all had all this brain time to think about it, the 5 have died because we were so busy trying to make up our collective minds.

I'm a do'er, it is natural and normal to act, even if my life is the one sacrificed. It is not hero syndrome it is basic human compassion.
Some one or several are going to die, the less blood spilled the better.

Absolutely! It is interesting that you mention being a doer. Back when I lived in the Bay Area, I had a tendency to respond to situations. For example, I once caught a shoplifter running out of the Circuit City on Van Ness when the security guy let the shoplifter slip through his hands and I tackled him.

In that same period, I ended up saving a guy's life who was owner of a little corner market who got shot outside the store. My military training kicked in and by the time that the actual first responders got there, I had organized my housemates so that one was keeping his wife calm, one was holding the flashlight so I could see where I needed to have pressure, one was doing something else I don't remember and one was inside the store watching over things. The cops and the paramedics asked who had put all of the organization together and they said "her". It was at that moment that I realized what I had just done and then the shakes hit me because I realized "oh my goodness, I think I just saved this guy's life". I didn't have time to think when I first heard the gunshots, there was only enough time to act and think about it later.

Sometimes there's only enough time to respond to a situation, not to deliberate our way through it.

Cheers
Aj