Introduction
A strange universe is where many unpredictable things can happen hypothetically and occur. One of these is the mysterious, supernatural, deadly Trolley that annihilates everything it touches and can destroy even entire worlds. Unfortunately, this mystical entity has come to my world, and its presence poses a danger to me and the reality in which I live.
I stood before a reluctant conductor who approached me and told me I must make a difficult ethical choice, or everything would evaporate. The philosophical dilemma is that I have to choose between two targets to destroy. The first target can be ‘enough food to feed all the starving kids on earth,’ and the second is ‘a philosopher who will one day bring peace to the world.’ Since the ethical dilemma is global and ultimate, and sacrifice by any target will bring consequences on a scale that will permanently change the whole world, utilitarianism is a better analytical tool.
Sacrificing ‘Enough Food to Feed All the Starving Kids on Earth’
The first outcome in this apocalyptic form of the standard Trolley problem is to sacrifice ‘enough food to feed all the starving kids on earth’ to save the world. Such wording provides not only several interpretations but also generates several questions. The effect would be permanent for humanity, and there would always be hungry children.
However, the question is how this effect would affect children and the scale of the consequences of such a decision. Possible assumptions are that there would be many starving children worldwide, and their number would grow constantly, or there would be some constant proportion of them relative to the entire human population. Another one is that humanity could feed almost everyone except, for example, one or five young people. From a normative ethics perspective, this target would increase the situational vulnerability of malnourished children and make it inherent to poor ones (Schweiger, 2019). Therefore, making humanity unable to solve this socioeconomic and humanitarian problem would be morally wrong.
Sacrificing ‘A Philosopher Who Will One Day Bring Peace to the World’
The second outcome in the ethical dilemma of disintegrating the Trolley with equally awful choices is the death of ‘a philosopher who will one day bring peace to the world.’ This formulation is also incredibly vague, and the critical question it raises is whether this future or existing philosopher is the only option for humankind to achieve peaceful coexistence. To paraphrase, what if a group of people, an artificial intelligence, an animal, or any other non-humanoid, or nothing at all, is what would bring eternal global peace to humanity? Does selecting this as a target exclude the possibility of achieving peace at all for existing and future states, societies, and individuals?
By choosing this possibility as one that would never materialize, I would make sure that humanity would always suffer from conflicts and wars. Using the language of academic ethics, I would doom the world to the inability to get rid of some “situational vulnerabilities” (Schweiger, 2019, p. 289). Making it the target would also be a conventionally morally wrong action from me.
Global Peace Instead of Satiety for All Malnourished Children
It sounds pragmatic, but all the food enough to feed all the malnourished and starving kids is the preferable target for sacrifice over a peacemaker thinker from a utilitarian viewpoint. If the situation of a supernatural Trolley happened and I had to decide the world’s fate, I would follow utilitarianism. Dooming long-term malnourished and hungry children to further starvation may sound cruel, but it is a comparatively lesser evil than allowing wars and conflicts to continue. The suffering of people from military confrontations is more numerous, intense, and diverse than the starvation of children. Moreover, humanity would still be able to minimize it.
My ‘prima facia duty’ as a professional would be to choose ‘enough food to feed all the starving kids on earth’ as the target. This ethical dilemma has an “obvious utilitarian solution” in its design; its imagery implies it (Winking & Koster, 2021). The difference is that this particular interdimensional Trolley makes one choose between more morally and ethically equivalent options.
Conclusion
Almost everyone has experience with real-life complex ethical dilemmas. One method of addressing them more humanely and fairly is to analyze hypothetical questions involving complex ethics; it also serves as a practical coping technique. This paper analyzed what is preferable to lose forever: a possible solution to a child’s starvation or a person capable of establishing world peace. By using utilitarianism, it has been proven that leaving the opportunity for a peacemaker thinker to be born or to live further is a relatively greater good. A possible counter-claim would be that humanity could achieve peace without such a philosopher while leaving many young people inevitably and eternally malnourished and hungry, which is a far greater moral sin.
References
Schweiger, G. (2019). Ethics, poverty and children’s vulnerability. Ethics and Social Welfare, 13(3), 288-301. Web.
Winking, J., & Koster, J. (2021). Small-scale utilitarianism: High acceptance of utilitarian solutions to trolley problems among a horticultural population in Nicaragua. PLoS ONE, 16(4), 1-17. Web.