Tragedy and Morals
While attending my sister’s wedding, my two-year-old son and I had just finished taking a father and son nap and were walking out of our hotel room in search of my wife and my other son. We decided to check the pool. When we got there, I saw two unattended toddler-age girls playing dangerously close to the edge of the pool. Before I had a chance to find their parents, try and move them, or do something else, they jump into the pool together. As I jumped fully clothed into the pool to save them, I heard another splash right behind me. My son followed me into the pool! Almost instinctively, I swam around and got my son from the floor of the pool, put him on the edge and sternly told him to stay put. I screamed for help, took another breath, and pushed off the wall of the pool to try and save the girls. I got them, both unconscious, to the side of the pool. I sat my son in a poolside chair and try to give CPR to the girls alternating one after the other. I screamed for help again. Finally, help arrived to call 911 and the paramedics got there shortly. They declared one of the girls dead at the site. The other one was rushed to hospital and may be in a coma. My son was traumatized, but is in perfect physical condition. I was weeping and shaking and realizing that my choice between who to save and when and how leaves my sense of right and wrong all shook up. I cried tears of joy and gratitude as I held my live son and those very same tears were excruciatingly painful realizations that an innocent little girl had just died and, despite my best efforts, I had something to do with it.
Thankfully, this story is pure fiction. But, it should serve to remind us that everything we do is not so easily parsed out into neat, guilt-free categories of right and wrong. Nothing could be truer than when we deal with humans, especially children. The “deals” we strike in one direction or another always fall short of our greatest dreams and aspirations. So, it seems, that when we attempt to do our “best” — or, to do what is “right” — we have a plethora of tragically imperfect options. But in that tragedy there is still hope, joy and love. The difference is that it is not naïve, intoxicated, or simplistic.
Insofar as human action that can be judged morally, ethically, or otherwise, the meaning that moralistic language attempts to express will always be fundamentally imperfect and, therefore, tragic. But that tragic sense should not paralyze us or make us cranky and depressed. If anything it should make our world more open to complexity, difficulty, and beauty, as it already is.
There will be casualties in many forms and to various degrees because of our decisions. That is just a fact of life. Every dollar we spend, for example, is a dollar that could have gone elsewhere, to a better cause, perhaps. Every hour is an hour that could have been “better.” But the most important question is whether our intuitive sense of “our best” and “what is right” can measure up to those complex human “guilt feelings” that reside in our conscience and, ultimately, in God.
When we confront those sentiments about our lives we will often find ourselves in the posture of mixed feelings where our tears are not completely happy or sad. This sometimes gut wrenching reality should keep us humble, careful, intelligent, and above all — loving. No matter who wins or loses (however we understand that) and regardless of what we do or don’t do, we should not take to boastful or mournful dispositions. Life isn’t that simple or superficial. Instead we should continue to chase after the love, hope, and joy that are sober and honest, I think.
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Wow, Sam, you had me going for a bit there. In any case, I am in basic agreement here. When I teach confirmation at my parish, the Ignatius Press text book sternly warns the students that, if they are not sure how to act, they must first check with the Church and form their consciences. It is sinful to act with an unformed conscience.
I have to point out to the students that, sometimes, there are situations where acting or not acting RIGHT NOW is a moral decision, and consulting the Catechism is not an option.
As you point out, one thing we need to be able to do is live with some ambiguity. The false sense of security that comes with memorizing moral precepts can actually be quite crippling. Often, it can blind us to the real dangers and fears of people caught in morally ambiguous situations (even when such situations are only morally ambiguous in the subjective sense). Secondly, I think this highlights the value of virtue ethics, properly done. Forming virtuous people will serve us better in the long term than forming apologetic rhetoric machines.
It appears like you are attempting to define away ideal action. Certainly empathy should accompany any confrontation with actual evil, but it shouldn’t cause impotence in defining it. On a related note, we have a tendency to push agency too far away from the act. For example, we have a tendency to say things like Grandma broke her hip because Uncle Bill didn’t salt the sidewalk. Grandma broke her hip because she fell.
Getting back to the first point, I like how canon law first addresses the act and then it addresses the state of the actor. I think we get poor results when we mix the two.
“It appears like you are attempting to define away ideal action.”
I couldn’t possibly be doing that intentionally since I have no idea what ideal action is. What do you mean by that (ideal action) and the other technical distinctions you are making?
When I read your hypothetical, I don’t see why you feel anguish over your choice. The situation is clearly sad and troubling, but you attempted to save both lives. You weren’t deciding who lived or died. That had already been set in motion.
Thankfully, this story is pure fiction.
I hate you. ;)
MZ: That’s the point. Whether or not I act in the “best” way I could, there is still a deeply tragic result that make me feel tremendously sad and happy. The anguish comes for reasons that are not properly “moral” from a rationalistic sense of moralisty, instead, as Paschal puts it: the heart has its reasons. Those reasons of the heart that manifest guilt, happiness, ambivalence, and anger (and more), all at once are not dismissible, as I see it. In fact, their intuitive logic drives whatever morals we may tout after the fact.
Are these feelings a result of personal defect (what I should have done) or communal grief (like saddness of Princess Di passing)?
My mother was a nurse and was quite detached from these emotions you describe, having been in the situations many times. That seems to be fairly common in the medical field. There is an acceptance over the limits of human action.
Interesting post.
If I’m understanding MZ right, though, I think I agree with his comments. It seems like the situation you’re setting up is: Three helpless children fall in the water. One is your son. You can rescue all three, but chances are that given the amounts of time involved only one is sure to survive. What do you do?
This underlines why every so often I go on a rant about how much I hate theoretical moral dilemmas. They’re often built around the idea that there is one best thing to do in each situation from a moral perspective, and that all elements of ones decisions (or instinctual reactions) must have some sort of moral meaning.
Given the situation, I’d tend to say that the one immoral choice that you might make would be a shrug and walk away, while knowing you had the capacity to rescue some or all of the children. Once you’re in the water rescuing people, whom you rescue is not necessarily a matter of morality but of affection, human attachment, instinct, etc.
I think the problem that many people fall into (and I’m not saying that you fall into this — but its in the cultural atmosphere when it comes to morality) is thinking that every choice we make is a moral one. If you’re in the position of saving the life of one of three people, and you choose to save the life of the one who is your son, that doesn’t necessarily imply a moral choice that your son’s life is worth more than those of the other children. The moral choice is identical in all cases: save a life. But your choice of which life to save is formed by affection and instinct which both drive you to preserve one of your own family.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t feel a sense of tragedy that despite your best efforts, lives were lost. But I’m not sure it’s because of a moral issue.
Brett,
Agreed. One can’t give in to catechism paralysis. Though at the same time, I guess I’d always taken that to mean that if unsure of something _and able_ one should seek to form one’s conscience rather than simply trying to “feel out” what seemed right. If one has the opportunity to form one’s conscience and decides to simply go with one’s instincts instead, that can lead to problems.
In one of the episodes of Lois and Clark, Clark Kent loses his powers to Lois Lane, who must do his “job” until the powers can be transferred back to him. After a day or so on the job doing heroic deeds, she says to him that she only now understands how he must feel not about what he can and does do, but how he feels about what he can’t do, because, of course, he can only do so much. I thought it was a fascinating point for a lightweight television show. Imagine having the power to avert disasters and save lives, but knowing that if you save some lives, there are others you have to let go.
Obligation is messy.
Thanks everyone, I just want to point out that this point should also serve to clarify and be read in tandem with my earlier one on morals. It is so nice to have such a robust engagement here, thank again.
Sam,
Soon after becoming a Catholic a few years ago, I learned about something called “scrupulosity.” Some of what you write sounds like scrupulosity at the hypothetical or abstract level, although in the end you seem to be against scrupulosity in morals or moralism in general.
One thing I like about Catholicism is that on the one hand it sets a very high bar in terms of what I will call “morals” for lack of a better word (and I hope you are not offended!): we have the examples of the saints, and at some level we know they are human beings just like us; and there is the Church’s theme of a “call to holiness” in recent times. On the other hand, the Church is very wise and tolerant about human weakness, and forgiveness is always available to the truly penitent through the sacrament of reconciliation.
Finally, we can ask, How did Jesus teach us about “morals”? Most basically, he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and his other teachings (equating hatred with murder, for example) set the bar almost ridiculously high, yet without specific precepts.
I think we have a Biblical context here (see also St. Paul on the law) that needs to get into a discussion like this in a bigger way.