What’s the right thing to do?

Imagine you were driving a trolley car down a track and you suddenly saw five people further down the track in front of you who you were going to hit. You could not stop and the people could not get out of the way. They would certainly die if you hit them. Then you notice a junction coming up, so you could leave the main track, but you would hit a different person. But only one. Would you turn off the main track? Most people would. Now imagine that you are standing on a bridge looking over the side at a train whose brakes have failed and is going to plough into five people. There is a fat person standing next to you. If you pushed him over the bridge onto the track his body would stop the train, but he would die. Would you push him? Probably not! What’s the difference?

I have been enjoying the Harvard Youtube Channel. There’s an excellent series of lectures on Justice: What’s the right thing to do? An important part of language learning is finding interesting material which is so captivating that you forget about the language and focus on the content, meanwhile your language is getting better and better. I fully recommend this fascinating series of lectures from Harvard University delivered by an excellent speaker whose language is very accessible. Get a Harvard education for free here!