The Game of Choice

When I was a young kid I remember playing a kind of game with my friends. We didn’t have a name for it, but it could have been called, “Pushed to the Limits.” It’s not as serious as it sounds, but it did have meaning. The game went like this – each kid would try to outdo the other by creating a dare of such intensity that the challenged kid would not know how to answer.

It goes like this. The challenger says, “There’s a robber pointing a gun at your mother, and you know he’s going to pull the trigger, and the only way you can stop your mother from being killed is to step in front of the gun. Would you do it?!?

Now the kid being challenged has three options. He can say, “Yes.” He can say ”No.” Or, as sometimes happened, he could say something like, “Oh yea, well your mother and your father are fighting, and your mom’s gonna shoot your father, and the only way you can stop it is to shoot your mother. What’re you gonna do about that!?”

It’s about morals, responsibility, and consequences. And reactions. It’s relatively easy to understand the morals, responsibility, and consequences piece of this scenario, but the other aspect brought out (and not really explored by kids) is that of reactions, what someone decides in the heat of the moment.

You may not really know how you will react in extreme situations until and unless you are faced with one. Life is unpredictable – a hero is born; a fear is born out. Run in front of the “gun,” or run away.

And whether or not we want to look at it, there is a rational component to this – is my “mother” worth my life, at this moment, at her age, at my age, etc. We humans make ethical choices all the time, sometimes not even realizing it, and along with the choices come various issues – is it worth the sacrifice or not.

And sometimes we have time to think things over, and sometimes we do not. Or we don’t take the time.

Reactions. Ever make a decision and days later realize it was the wrong one? That what you did at the moment was react emotionally and if you had thought it over, would have made a different choice? Ethics, morality, or reaction. And time to think.

War.
9-11.
Invasions.
Over 3 thousand Americans lost their lives in those 9-11 events. More have died since in reaction to those events. Whether or not you believe the sacrifice worth it or not, it’s a fact. It’s a decision – jump in front of the gun, or go the other way.