Woman Overboard!

Last night in my Religion in Sociology class we were discussing the ethos, logoths and pathos. Logoths is logical reasoning, pathos can be described as sympathetic reasoning and ethos can be described as moral reasoning - for very simple definitions of those words.

The professor put forth the age old ethos question that if you were on a lifeboat with other people and there was one too many people on the boat for any chance of survival of the group, how would you decide who to toss off the boat? Now that is quite the moral question. Some people offered to pick straws, but there are no straws on the lifeboat. There are no guns either, as one person suggested, tho I am not sure why he needed the gun! There is no chance of anyone swimming along side because the water is freezing cold and there might be sharks. One girl was kind enough to offer to take turns hanging off the side of the boat before we were told this.

One person said throw the oldest person off. Well, I looked around the class and that would have been me! Nice to know that in a life boat with those people, I may have been tossed right off the side. I can't swim that well in very deep water! Someone else said "the ugliest," which just showed us something else about that person. What is beauty to one person may not be beauty to someone else. We all have different levels of attraction, so that idea was kaput.

I think I would sacrifice myself so the others could survive. Just like Spock did in the Star Trek II, the Wrath of Kahn. "The needs of the many outwiegh the needs of the few."

Remind me never to go on a cruise with the people in my Sociology class!