Moral Dilemmas

Recently, I have been telling a lot of my friends this moral dilemmas story that I find particularly interesting. I tend to tell this story a lot and I always get new interesting results.

A man and a woman love each other, but because of war, famine, disease, etc. they become separated into two cities, East City and West City, that are located across a large river. There is only one ferry service capable of going across the river. One day, the woman, who is in West City, goes to the port to take the ferry across to East City to be reunited with her love. The boatman who owns the ferry monopoly, has learned of her very peculiar situation and knows that given her circumstances, she would be much more inclined to pay a higher price to cross the river. Attempting to profit from her situation, the boat man charges her an exorbitant fee (let's just say 10,000 USD instead of a standard fare of 20 USD), which the poor woman cannot pay. Learning of her unfortunate circumstances, the richest man in West City offers to pay for the woman's ferry fare in exchange that she sleeps with him for one night. After all, the woman is very beautiful and very desperate, while the rich man is lonely and capable of helping her. The woman agrees, she sleeps with the rich man, she pays the boat man, and she is reunited with her lover in East City. The man and the woman get married and live happily for a number of years.

Several years after this course of events, the man's best friend travels to West City and during his travels, by pure freak accident, he learns about the entire series of events. Upon returning home, he tells his friend, the man, every detail of the story. The man holds very strong principles about cheating and adultery so he leaves his wife, the woman. Distraught and heartbroken, the woman kills herself.

Now for the dilemma part... Among the six characters in this story, the man, the woman, the friend, the rich man, and the boat man, how would you rank them in terms of most right or the one you agree with most to the least right or the one you agree with least.

Given that this is my blog, I suppose its important that I list my own rankings: 1) the woman, 2) the rich man, 3) the boat man, 4) the friend, 5) the man. Now, rather than expound upon a lengthy explanation of my own reasoning, I would rather pose a series of points and counter points. Having told this story many times to many different people, I've heard many extremely different responses. Some of which I agree with entirely, some of which I can understand but do not entirely passionately believe in, and some of which I vehemently disagree with.

Some common responses:

The friend is obviously the most moral because he didn't do anything wrong, he just did what friends do.

I actually could not disagree with this more. I cringe every time I get this answer for one very obvious reason: The friend didn't have to tell the man. Assuming that the friend knows the man very well, a natural assumption for a best friend and an assumption that everyone has made thus far, then he would have known how the man would react to that story. In that case, he had the choice of telling his friend and seeing their happy marriage fall apart or he could have withheld the information and let them live in ignorant happiness forever. To say that the friend "just did what friends do" is implicitly imposing a certain set of judgments of what defines a friend.

Some have responded that telling your friends the truth is simply what a friend does and should do, but I completely disagree. That is not what a friend does but what an informant or a witness on the stand does. I believe that a friend is someone who watches out for you, which I do not believe this friend did.

Alternatively, one could argue that by telling the man, the friend took a passive role and left the critical moral decisions to the man, whereas if the friend had withheld the truth from the man, he was imposing his own system of morals upon the man, something which the man would not have appreciated. Indeed, who is the friend to decide what it is better for the man? But then do not friends exist to take an active role in their friends lives for their mutual benefit?

The boatman was only conducting business, which he has every right to do.

A lot of people have made this claim, which I find very disturbing and alarming. This statement makes many extremely capitalist assumptions and the fact that most people have been unable to detect these capitalist assumptions frightens me. Indeed, the boatman is actually just doing something known as price discrimination, a common concept taught in every economics class. Basically, for economies where there is a price-maker, which defintiely describes this ferry monopoly, it is more efficient to give people who are willing to pay more higher prices. This is exactly what took place in the story as I'm sure anybody would pay more to be reunited with long lost love than for leisure. This is the same reasoning that goes into raising ticket prices for flights that are sooner rather than later. If one really really needed to be somewhere in two days, then one would be willing to pay more for the ticket.

But what gives the boat man the right to charge anybody any price he wants in the first place? Why does the boatman own a monopoly over transportation over the river? Why don't the givernments own the ferry service? Roads, bridges, trains, and ferries are actually publicly owned in most of the US, Canada and Europe. What gives the boatman the right to even own that boat? Did he make the boat? Did he earn it? Was there meritocratic competition for ownership of the boat (perhaps he's the best damn boat man in the world) or did he inherit it? Why can't there be another boat?

Indeed, the story does not provide enough details to answer any of these questions, but that's what makes it a moral dilemma. This situation with the boatman basically leads to the question, which is more important, property rights or the general happiness of other people. In Leviathan, Hobbes defined property as nothing more than that which one can prevent other individuals from consuming. In a state of nature, people defended property themselves, while today we have laws that garauntee property. An economist would argue that its possible to respect both property rights and the general happiness of other people if the boatman charged a fare that was equivalent to the monetary equivalent of the utility the woman would have gained from reunion with her lover minus the opportunity cost of attaining that much money. But its so hard to quantify love and I suppose that's why they call economics the dismal science.


Some rare responses:

The woman cheated on the man and thus she does not deserve his love.

I've only heard this once so I'll just assume most people understand the problem with this statement. Basically, it makes a very simple assumption that sleeping with someone else constitutes cheating and someone that cheats does not deserve to be involved with the one they are cheating on. Although I would agree that one who cheats on his or her lover does not deserve that lover, the ambiguity lies within the statement that sleeping with someone else always constitutes as cheating.

Now before anyone flips out on that last sentence, I do acknowledge that most of the time, sleeping with someone else does constitute as cheating. This is a social expectation that has been pounded into every single one of our heads in every single movie, serial or song that has ever covered the topic. But why is it that extramarital or extra-whatever sex is universally considered a breech of the trust that exists in a loving relationship? If one masturbates while in a relationship, that is not considered cheating even though technically the masturbator had sexual relations with him or herself instead of his or her partner (an absurd concept, I know). If someone involved in a relationship solicits a prostitute during a period of extended separation from his or her lover (we all have urges), is that necessarily the same as cheating? Does sex only need to include the other partner, meaning that a threesome including the partner does not constitute as cheating?

I know a few people who would argue for celibacy until marriage or at the very least, exclusion of sexual activity for a person you love. Even among those who hold such principles for themselves, there are very few people judge other people as moral or immoral based on those principles. The idea that sex is something one only does with someone one loves has been refuted ever since prostitution became a profession (for those who don't know, that's since ever). Modern society has broken down this concept even further with casual sex, friends with benefits, and no-strings-attached. Nonetheless, almost everybody today agrees that whenever someone is involved in a relationship, that is where casual sex ends and sex becomes exclusive to the relationship.

But why is this so? That question is not meant to imply that it shouldn't be so (I for one would be very deeply hurt if anybody I was ever invovled with decided to participate in casual sex with other people), but that there are reasons why we feel this way. We want to be loved, desired, and needed exclusively by the one we love. In this story however, the woman neither loves nor desires the rich man, though she may need the rich man for money that the man cannot provide and does not even know she needs. In fact, the only reason she sleeps with the rich man is because she loves, desires, and needs to be with the man and the rich man is only a means towards an end.

The woman killed herself, which eliminates any possibility of ever getting back together with the man, which is just stupid.

I've only heard this argument once and it was very surprising so I was unable to come up with an adequate response at the time. That was a moment I heavily regret because of my dislike of this type of anti-suicide argument. Clearly this argument follows the reasoning that one should never kill oneself as long as there is a sliver of hope of attaining happiness. This argument is clearly rooted in utilitarianism as it suggests that no matter how small the probability for happiness may be, the expected result is greater than zero, which would be the result if one commits suicide. However, this completely ignores the pain one experiences while alive before finally attaining that happiness or death by other means. This pain is also very probably and larger in magnitude than zero, which is the pain one would experience if one commits suicide. (Technically, for a more sophisticated mathematical analysis of this issue, we should actually be looking at it as a time series problem.)

Honestly, I cannot complain enough about how much I dislike that argument. It just feels like it rooted in an "anything is possible!" optimism that I thought we all learned in middle school was complete bull shit.

The rich man should be at the top since he is the only character that does not directly influence or affect another character and he is the only character that increased the general happiness of all characters.

I've actually only met one person who ever placed the rich man at the top of the list (paying for sex is an act that's very easily and often implicitly villified), but this individual actually had a very strong argument to support this point. Indeed, the rich man did not impose any situation upon the woman, but left the decision to her. Additionally, the rich man is really the only character who provided a pathway for a state of greater happiness for the entire system. If you remove either the price-discriminating boat man or the friend from the story (you can't remove the man or the woman because then there would be no story), then the man and woman would be living happily together. However, if you remove the rich man from the story, the man and woman remain separated.


Some final comments:

All the comments above generally reflect my own line of thinking as I ranked the characters. In case you forgot its 1) the woman, 2) the rich man, 3) the boat man, 4) the friend, and 5) the man. Although its easy enough to gather where I would place the rich man, the boat man, and the friend based on my comments above, why I specifically placed the woman at the top and the man at the bottom has been left out. I must confess that my personal biases plays a large part into how I placed them at the ends.

I really hate the man (no, I do not mean "the man" in reference to the persisting system of race, class, gender or sexual-identity oppression, but rather this man in the story). He has taken this "moral" of his above the woman he loved and his own happiness. Will upholding this moral really make him, her, or anybody else happier? I'm clearly using a utilitarian/general happiness principle method to put down the man, which I suppose may be a little unfair since the man is clearly coming from a completely different point of view. I suppose this clearly reveals that I am much more invlined towards a utilitarian judgement than the man in this story, but utilitarianism vs categorical imperative vs minimax utilitarianism vs etc. is not a discussion I want to get into.

Not only does the man pursue his "morals" to the point where it makes everybody unhappy, but its also a "moral" about being with a woman that has slept with someone outside of a relationship and that just reeks of religion. (Well, I guess I just came out of the atheist closet...) Whereas I can understand principled ideologies such as human rights and pacifism, I cannot even begin to understand this principles. Not only am I opposed to a principled judgment of actions and individuals, but I think this particular principle is complete crap.

While I hate the man, I love the woman. Her character seems like a tragic hero that makes many sacrifices to change the state of the system only to have those sacrifices ironically reverse her intentions. She is the only character that really sacrificed a part of herself and made herself vulnerable to attain a greater state of happiness. Furthermore, I just find it very tragic how despite her attempts to exercise agency upon the story, she's the most powerless character as she is passed like an object from character to character. And she's fighting for love! I just cannot help myself against that kind of motivation! Albeit, none of the things I have mentioned necessarily justify her as a moral character, but I suppose that reveals my own romantic bias.

In the end, there is no right or wrong reasoning for ordering the five characters in this story. This is not a riddle that is meant to be solved, but rather an exercise to push people to carefully examine their own moral judgment. Its intended to evoke personal biases that one may never have known existed. Personally, although I have always known that I am atheist with a utilitarian predilection, I never realized that I was also a bit of an irrational romantic.