The Trolley Problem (Brian Katcher)

 

I remember an old SNL sketch from the late 1980s, where two NASA engineers are monitoring a space shuttle launch, when a stream of increasingly unlikable celebrities wander under the rocket engines: Lassie the dog, Jessica McClure (the toddler who was trapped in a well for several days), Kathy Fiscus (who fell down a well in the 1940s), Adolf Hitler (who's inexplicably carrying the Mona Lisa), Dan Quayle, Mikhail Gorbachev, The Invisible Man (or was he even there?), and Donald and Ivana Trump. The engineers had to decide whether or not to halt the launch or allow the trespassers to be burned to death when the shuttle engines fired.

This sketch reminds me of The Trolley Problem, an ethics scenario in which a subject is asked if they would prevent a runaway trolley from crushing several people by diverting it onto a track where it would only crush one person. You can add certain variables to the situation, such as the lone person is a good friend of yours, or everyone in the group of people is elderly or infirm, etc. One could debate it for hours.

Quite frankly, I've always loved the problem, simply because I think I should be the arbiter of who lives and who dies. Seriously. Just a little 'smite' button on my keyboard to deal with all the TERFs, INCELs, and other obnoxious acronyms I meet online. Hit the button and tune in for the news report about someone being crushed by an anvil at their desk.

But I was born mortal, and unlike the delightful dream I had the other day, I can't summon an elder god to the earth plane, utterly betraying humanity in return for unholy power. So all my life and death decisions are totally theoretical. I supposes it's like that for everyone.

Oh, and the engineers in the sketch scrubbed the launch for everyone...except the Trumps.