Bike Riding and Ethics
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The other day while riding downhill on my bicycle, averaging speeds above 35mph, I happened to notice that a squirrel had been struck, perhaps a few moments before I passed it, by another cyclist or a car. The squirrel was not dead, it was struggling and writhing, its head almost entirely severed and it lay there dying. It probably died long before I reached the bottom of the mountain. Note that I captured all this in a fleeting moment - there was a brief instinct to brake and help put it out of its misery but I continued downhill, my thoughts moving quickly - from the shame of not helping the miserable creature by putting an end to its suffering, to the ethics behind my inaction.
I asked myself the question what my “kartavya” (duty) was to that squirrel. What was my role in the death of that squirrel? Am I as responsible for its death as the person who directly laid the hit. What if instead of a squirrel it were a person? Is letting a person die as dastardly an act as laying a hit on that person that caused them to die? I know the utilitarian answer to that question but that is not at all comforting.
I know that if it were a person, I would have done everything in my power to help that person, but that got me to the question - what if the only reasonable help that I could offer that person was, like the squirrel, a quick death. Would I act illegally? Obviously what was supposed to be an exhilarating downhill ride was quickly filled with angst. At least the physical pain of the uphill ride was masked easily with memories of funny expressions. There was zero thrill to be had in this downhill return. I confess that I was at a complete loss, I even blew past a STOP sign, with a middle-aged man yelling sarcastically from his car “Nice Stop”.
I have mulled on this quite a bit the last few days and started doing some research around the ethics of this issue, only to come across the thought experiment involving a Violinst. Wikipedia has a nice write-up about it here. The gist of the conundurum is as follows The society of music lovers determines from medical records that you and you alone can save the violinist’s life by being hooked up to him for nine months. The music lovers break into your home while you are asleep and hook the unconscious (and unknowing, hence innocent) violinist to you. You may want to unhook him, but you are then faced with this argument put forward by the music lovers: The violinist is an innocent person with a right to life. Unhooking him will result in his death.
Is unhooking yourself from the violinist morally wrong? The unethical act of breaking into your home not withstanding, is unhooking yourself and getting 9 months of your life back, worth the death of a violinist. (Brass players take note: As a wannabe violinist I know the punch line here).
Anyway - The Wiki article wades deep into abortion and the morality issues surrounding it - I will not even touch that. Some of my friends will argue that the squirrel being lower in the totem pole of evolution got what was coming to it and would have no remorse, except perhaps the lack of a skewer and a good fire. But what would they do if it were a person. What if they were the one connected to the violinist? Some of them blog in this forum frequently so perhaps they will weigh in.
Note that this is not a Gandhian “experiment with truth” for me - it is simply a “what if” exercise rooted in a real world experience examining my own ethics around an issue. I am not the one who practices ‘ahimsa’ in the Gandhian sense of the word, I have eaten all kinds of red meat in my teenage years and continue to eat fish and I have no qualms about that. I am certainly not a non-violinist in the absolute sense of that word - and if you have heard me play, I am no violinist either. 
All this for a squirrel? I personally wouldn’t even bother with a skewer and a fire: too little meat.
My own personal take on this is best reflected in this quote from Simon Blackburn, Cambridge professor and author of many books on Philosophy:
If you are guilty of blowing through Stop signs often, just remember that sometimes the green light traffic wins. One of my pet driving peeves here is cyclists for whom the rules of the road do not apply. Taxi drivers are another lot who follow their own code of driving.
Not to worry! Blowing through that stop sign was a momentary lapse of concentration. Most riders I know are quite diligent about traffic signs.
Well the squirrel would be lower only in the totem pole of sentience and that to many is what marks the distinction (well potential for sentience is also important hence babies and comatose patients are given considerable rights).
Unhooking myself from the violinist - If the roles were reversed and I was the violinist, I would be ok if my sustainer unhooked herself. If she didn’t I would consider her to be a saint at the end of 9 months. So would I unhook myself? If I were a saint, no - if I were a mere mortal, yes - and I would carry the burden with me for the rest of my life.
Ask me the question twice more and I’ll be sure to give you three other answers
As to the moral question at hand, I’m not sure how I would react to finding myself hooked to the violinist and then finding out that I would need to remain like that for nine months … I most likely would initially be furious at being forced into such a dilemma but after the dust settles, it is possible that I would remain hooked for the nine months.
I’d like to know how a medical doctor would perceive the situation and how they would act. Being in an occupation that is about saving lives, would a doctor’s moral choice be bound (ie, stay hooked up) by having sworn the Hippocratic Oath or would it really be a personal one? I suspect it to be a personal choice.
I read this and try to hook up with my village violinist but she attack me with violin case. Is very immoral, yas? Even I said not nine months, just one weekend, but she still beat me on my head. Maybe I try tuba player, everyone say she blow very good he he…
Borat, you trying to get the village violinist pregnant or what? I mean, nine months and all. My own moral dilemma is whether or not I can handle more than one Borat running around the Kazakh countryside. And if Borat was hooked to me instead of a violinist, there’ll be no dilemma at all…
St. John, full of grace …
I shall add a twist to the dilemma. What if 3 months down the line, you were given the choice to be hooked to two tuba players for just 4 months. You could save them both but would have to let the violinist die in the process.
Pray tell, what would you do?
I’d stick to my violinist player out of loyalty to my three months already on the job. Ok tafkap, now we are getting a little out of hand with our hypothetical quandaries.