Training Log Archive: hughmac3In the 7 days ending Mar 25, 2017: |
| « | » |
| » now | ||||||||||
| Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa | |||||||
Wednesday Mar 22, 2017 #
Note
From Chapter Six:
One instructor asked us to consider that we were in a Latin-American country and captured by a guerrilla leader who is about to execute twenty natives. But, in an attempt to co-opt us into murder and likely subsequent blackmail, he says that if you kill one native, he won't kill the other nineteen. What to do? We argued options for a classroom hour; and opinions ranged from accepting the need to kill one native (and picking the oldest and most infirm) to save the remainder, to refusing to be co-opted and blackmailed into an immoral act. We were asked to write a very brief summary of what we would likely do and turn it in. I remember the gist of my answer still. It could have been written by Sergeant Stryker – played by John Wayne – in Sands of Iwo Jima. I said: “Pretend to agree. Be subservient, cringe a little. Take the rifle. Pretend to select someone, stand in front of them and pull the trigger. Since they would not have handed you a loaded rifle, no one would die. Then, either they hand you a loaded rifle and you use it on the guerrilla leader, or they do something else unknowable.” I received a FAIL regarding understanding moral issues, and a PASS regarding taking some aggressive action. The instructor also wrote “INTERESTING” in the margin. I supposed that Saint Peter might someday also give me another FAIL – PASS – INTERESTING.
One instructor asked us to consider that we were in a Latin-American country and captured by a guerrilla leader who is about to execute twenty natives. But, in an attempt to co-opt us into murder and likely subsequent blackmail, he says that if you kill one native, he won't kill the other nineteen. What to do? We argued options for a classroom hour; and opinions ranged from accepting the need to kill one native (and picking the oldest and most infirm) to save the remainder, to refusing to be co-opted and blackmailed into an immoral act. We were asked to write a very brief summary of what we would likely do and turn it in. I remember the gist of my answer still. It could have been written by Sergeant Stryker – played by John Wayne – in Sands of Iwo Jima. I said: “Pretend to agree. Be subservient, cringe a little. Take the rifle. Pretend to select someone, stand in front of them and pull the trigger. Since they would not have handed you a loaded rifle, no one would die. Then, either they hand you a loaded rifle and you use it on the guerrilla leader, or they do something else unknowable.” I received a FAIL regarding understanding moral issues, and a PASS regarding taking some aggressive action. The instructor also wrote “INTERESTING” in the margin. I supposed that Saint Peter might someday also give me another FAIL – PASS – INTERESTING.