What would you do in this scenario (hypothetical)?

It might not do any good, but I would offer myself as the other innocent inmate. I could not be responsible for my own son’s death.

Tackle the guard and try to kill him, sure I’ll die. But fuck it, I probably will anyway – and at least there’s one less psycho.

But if I had to choose an option from those presented, I’d definitely be a coward and choose inaction I think.

I just edited the question a bit. Apologies.

In response to the edit:

If he was terminally ill, he’s going to be killed by them or whatever he has regardless and probably not humanely. I might kill him then. And make sure he dies quickly.

I would leap forward and break my son’s neck myself. It’s faster than hanging.

Here’s why-
There was a woman and her infant being taken to a concentration camp. She wasn’t moving fast enough and a guard grabbed her baby and threatened to shoot it. This was towards the end of the war and she knew that her child would be killed either way. She jumped forward and broke her child’s neck saying that if anyone were to kill her baby it would be her. She gave it life and she would take it- not letting anything of the Nazi’s touch her child.

I’ve given months of thought to this and I see her point. It was her last chance to do something for her child- end the baby’s suffering and keep it from being used as a pawn.

I would refuse to be any part in the guards little mind fuck.

@filmfann: You’re a part of it. Even by inaction your participation is forced by the situation he created.

@asmonet That’s a good point, and one that must be brought up, but it’s only half-right. There is active inaction and passive inaction. See here. This page is a short intro to why Harry Frankfurt is known as a great moral philosopher: because of his work with these sorts of situations. He champions (and came up with) the could-not-have-done-otherwise theory of ethics.

If this sounds interesting to anyone and you’d like to look further into it, I can suggest some articles.

I’d do it, I would think, rather my son die at my hand than some random jackoff full of malice. I’d find it to have a certain degree of mercy to it. Then I’d probably seek death myself.

@asmonet Probably in a manner as such.

The way that game was played, refusing to do anything can result in much worse scenarios. For example, if the father refuses to remove the chair, the guards might decide to strangle the son slowly and painfully in front of the father. The guards would most likely reject the father’s offer to be the second inmate and when the father proposed it might decide that several more innocent prisoners must die.

From what I have read, when such a situation was set up by the guards, the parent or spouse would choose to kill their family member as quickly and painlessly as possible and then would sometimes commit “suicide by guard” afterward.

In any case, such scenarios happened all too often in the camps when bored and sadistic guards decided to have a little fun with the prisoners.

@wildpotato: I suppose there’s something to be said for that, but whether you choose to not act, you freeze in fear, if inaction is the only option left to you or or you just don’t answer in time the outcome is the same it changes nothing. It only really affects things on an intellectual level.

I hope that makes sense, swine flu and lack of sleep are getting to me. Goodnight, Fluther.

I would remove the chair, but not before I told my child that I was doing it out of love so that he and others would not suffer. I could bear the burden of being the one to remove the chair but not for being the cause of another innocent person’s death.

Yeah, if you have ever read that classic piece of American literature. Of Mice and Men, the main character is faced with either killing his friend, or putting his friends fate into the hands of the angry ranchers. I think in this situation, people are dying all the time and to give someone a quick death is better than other possible scenarios. And yeah, if I was forced to kill my child, I would def be plotting a way to kill which ever guard made me do that.

Shoot the hostage.

I would tell the guard that I refuse to accept responsibility for the guard’s actions.

I’d pull the chair, better me to do it with my son’s knowledge than his greater panic with a hated stranger.

Kill the kid. Fester in anguish and despair. Calculate. Formulate escape plan. Enact plan. Kill as many guards on the way. Help others reach safety. Shoot self.

@SuperMouse “I could not be responsible for my own son’s death.” You would not be, whatever you did. The situation is set up so that the son will die anyway; adding the parent to the picture is simply a mindfuck, as someone says. In the scenario, there is no way you cannot prevent your son from dying—hence you are not responsible if he does. The guard is playing you in order to try and convince you that you are “responsible”, but you aren’t.

Regardless of the way the parent chooses to go to ease his/her own pain and/or that of his/her son’s, the person responsible for the son’s death in this scenario is the guard. Not the prisoners.

What if the sick fuck guard in the end just laughs and lets the kid go? If you have murdered your child you will never know. I have no idea what I would do for sure. It does seem most logical to kill my child and hope to die myself. But, if you have another child alive in the camp then what? Plus, I’m pretty sure mentally I would not be logical at the time.

I cannot believe I answered this question.

For some ethical dilemmas there are no good answers.

Good answers all around. Personally I have no idea how to answer the question that is why I posed it to everyone to see if it would help me clarify my own answer. Of course there is lots of great answers but i’m still lost.

@RedPowerLady: I really liked this question and discussed it with my partner last night, he also agreed he’d pull the chair and he is a father of several children. I’ve chewed this around trying to glean further why I would do it myself and I came up something else, horrible as it is.

I believe my child would have less fear at that moment to know it was me right there with them to pull the chair and to not let a stranger do it. For some reason I think a child would inately surrender to their parent with less panic and in the end, it’s the fear, panic and pain I’d want to lessen for them.

A part of me thinks by pulling the chair myself, it diminishes the power of the tormenter because I have the intimacy of the act and they are reduced to being a voyeur.

@hungryhungryhortence I think that is a really important point you bring up. I agree that the child’s panic and fear would likely be much less when caused by parent vs. stranger.

@kevbo The guard would be condoned by his superiors for his actions.
You know what….if this were a true scenario, and you choose to pull the chain, I’d be the guard would choose another victim anyway. I can’t even think about this!!

We cannot think about this situation clearly, I think, because there is no good answer. The question is posed in a way that whatever you do, you are screwed, and not only that, but you might also be screwed in ways not in the original terms (what if the guard shoots another person anyway, etc).

For some situations there are no “right” answers. The camp and the guard mean that ethics has already failed. It is an immoral situation, and so there is no one moral way out of it.

So I repeat my conviction that whatever you do, the guilty party is the guard.

@Janka No doubt that the guard is the guility one. But this could be straight out of the real-life concentration camps in Germany, WWII.

This question preyed upon my mind yesterday. I really think my reaction would be to move as fast as I could to kill the guard with my bare hands, knowing I’d probably die in the process…..

@Val123 No doubt this is straight out from real life. I do not see how that invalidates what I said?

@Janka Huh? I didn’t try to invalidate anything….

@Val123 Ok, then I completely missed the point. What confuses me is you said “No doubt that the guard is the guility one. But this could be straight out of the real-life concentration camps in Germany, WWII.”, which I read as “No doubt the guard is the guilty one, but [you cannot just say that because] this could be straight out of the real-life”.

English is not my first language, so this might simply be me misinterpreting the usage of “but” there. :)

@Janka No worries! I should have broken it up. Like @Janka No doubt the guard is the guilty one.

@all This scenerios could have come straight out of the real-life concentration camps in Germany, WWII.

;) My bad!

@Val123 No worries, thanks for explaining. :)