It’s just a cat!
"Man will become better when you show him what he is like," said Anton Chekhov once, and then this was repeated many times over in philosophy classes around the world. I just exited one such class on morality by Professor Paul Bloom of Yale University.
He stood in a heavily upholstered room with a coffee mug sitting silently yet attentive on a round table just inches away from him. Bloom completely ignored the cup while he spoke at length on moral judgment and action. He was standing in front of a camera operated by a one or a maximum of the two-person crew in all probability. Do you think it was moral of Bloom's crew to design the set with a coffee mug he completely ignored while he debated intensely about Good vs. Evil?
I am bringing this conflict to light because I needed a cliff-hanger after what Chekov said. I am no different from Mary Bale, who became the subject of much hatred after she was caught on camera throwing Lola, a cat, into a dustbin. After Mary Bale's cruelty spread across the internet, Mary Bale came out to defend herself sighting three apparent reasons for her act:
1. "It was a split second of the madness."
2. "I thought it would be funny."
3. "It's just a cat."
While Mary Bale was fined 25$ for her cruelty, no one stood up for the white coffee mug that Professor Bale did not touch during his lecture. I also wonder why my mind resorted to feeling for the unattended white cup of coffee. There is no apparent good or evil in the act of using a coffee mug as a prop. But I thought it would be funny, so does that make me less evil than Mary Bale, who dumped Lola, the cat, in the bin, thinking it was funny. Is it because a mug cannot feel, and Lola can?
The Scottish philosopher, David Hume, wrote, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." This makes Mary Bale and me alike in many ways. I obeyed my instinct to cause conflict, just like Bale heeded to her sense of humor.
Reason vs. Emotion is an age-old fight to decipher "how we should live," "what governs our thoughts," and "what is good, and what is evil." Supporters of the consequence theory suggest that any action should be weighed against whether it causes pain or pleasure, whereas Deontologists believe that moral rules apply despite the consequence. While emotion can be easily accused of being abstract and biased, research has proved that reason is subjective and grounded in bias, emotion, and prejudice. In the Mahabharata, Krishna reminds Arjun of his duty when he expresses the futility or the consequence of killing the Kauravas on the battlefield.
Intuition also dictates how we act in a situation: the sum of our experiences, acquired knowledge, and the subconscious levers in our brain. The classic thought experiment known as the trolley dilemma, developed by philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967, goes a long way in probing our moral intuitions. It has the remarkable capability of assessing whether the consequence of action can be judged solely based on its outcome.
The experiment creates a hypothetical situation where you are standing beside a tram track. Around the same time, you spot a runaway trolley hurtling fast towards the track where five unsuspecting men are working. They cannot hear the trolley, maybe because they have headphones on, and will not be able to move out of the way in time.
Now consider the second variation of this dilemma.
Imagine you are standing on a footbridge above the tram tracks. You see the runaway trolley moving fast towards the five unsuspecting workers, but there is no lever to divert it. Instead, a fat man is standing next to you on the footbridge who could slow down the trolley if he fell off the tracks to obstruct the oncoming trolley. In all probability, to create an obstruction, you must push him off the bridge because the fat man is not suicidal. So, would you push the fat man off the tracks?
Foot argues that there is a difference between the two scenarios of killing and letting die. The former is active while the latter is passive. Depending on the circumstances, our actions are controlled by a rational process plus an automatic, involuntary gut feeling. In this experiment, because the time to think, decide and act is minuscule, it is tough to show him a mirror or influence his decision. Chekov meant that 'Man will become better when you have the time to show him what he is like before he acts.' Or simply that 'Man will act better depending on who is watching.'