WOULD YOU THROW FATMAN FROM THE BRIDGE

Throw FatMan from the bridge.

As ever my intrepid hero FatMan, contiuely faces the issues that surround humanity, and as a writer I am faced with dilemmas on how to move the plot on through complex issues whilst retaining humour. Recently the issue at hand was how to make Hitlers argument for killing convincing, so FatMan would find it difficult not to agree with the meglomaniacs logic. We all face the same archetypal problems in life, so the answer to my question was simply to escalate a psychological dilemma that actually involves another Fat man, but not of my creation.

It goes like this.

Firstly, there is a basic psychological principle that affects how we behave in relation to decisions,  but let's take financial investments and relationships for example. In the investment world, if a client invest £1 with you, he will often invest £100 and more to justify the first descision to spent the pound however onerous it was. Placing faith in people, causes and religions lends well to this behaviour, just as much as with relationships. Many people continue with a relationship based on the original promise and the time invested, even though it is not exactly right for them.

Ok with this in mind, lets pretend you are driving a train. Up ahead you can see a car with the parents and two young children inside broken down on the tracks. You know you cannot stop the train in time to save them from the train crushing them. There is however a siding that you can steer the train into that will save the family, but a workman on the tracks will be killed.
What do you do. 
1. Take no action and let the family die
2. Take action and through that action save the many at the cost of the one.

Ok with your answer in mind, you are on a bridge over a railway line, you can see round a bend where there are some workmen trying to fix a break in the line, a train is approaching very fast full of passengers and cannot see the workmen. Unless the train brakes before the bridge the workmen will be killed and the train will de-rail killing all the passengers .
 
You cannot signal the train effectively to stop it, but there is a fat man on the bridge too, and if you throw him on the track the train will stop saving all the lives, but the fat man will die.

What do you do?

This is the difference between taking action and no action, revolution and evolution. The question is a simple one, one life for the many, but you have to live the the consequences of your actions. If you kill the FatMan you will be guilty of the murder of one man, if you let hundreds die you will not be guilty of murder by failing to save people, but you will know you could have saved them if you had the courage to throw the FatMan from the bridge.

In Hitlers fictional case he argued to FatMan, that by not acting rather than taking the revolution route to a new world order, thousand of millions would die needlessly over time, as opposed to tens of millions in the short term.  Taking action therefore takes courage and determination where as doing nothing is useful to nobody.

We play out these dilemmas in our lives, albeit on not such a grand global scale, however with none the less considerable ramifications in our own lives and those around us. 

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." 
Edmund Burke ( possible quote.)

So does evil win when bad men try to do bad things to do good things, or when good men do bad things for good ends, or or when good and bad men do nothing at all.

Personally I think if we all do the best we can together, the ultimate conclusion is, we will be doing good for both ourselves and for others.