Blog 10

Once again we visit the Lifeboat model that was introduced to us by Kohak in The Green Halo. In this book, Midgley focuses on the two extreme options we have to choose from - either letting everyone on and sinking the boat, or not saving anyone. This obviously poses a huge dilemma because if you choose the second option, then how could you live with yourself knowing that you possibly caused the death of many individuals. In the first option, you would be attempting to save everyone, but then they would all just die, however you would die with this decision as well.

Midgley also looks at how you would pick people if you could choose a few to save. She says it basically becomes us v. them (or more me v. them) since you can't really decide what "us" includes. She gives us a couple of diagrams of concentric circles to decide how close each group is to us, but then decides that overlapping circles would work much better.

These diagrams kind of confused me, because they didn't include a majority of things and they can't be applied to every single person. Some people would say that personal friends are more of a family to them than their actual family so they would put personal friends ahead of family in the circles.

Although it is hard to make a choice as clear-cut as the lifeboat model asks for, humans all do have a a humane side to them because like she says, it would be difficult to drive down the road and not help a suffering dog, especially if you were the person to hit the dog. For myself, I have an extreme passion for animals and it would be hard to place them before some people even in the human population... I realize this could raise some controversy but that is how I feel.