What To Do?

 

(”When Dorothy Allison was 17 and a freshman at a small liberal arts college in Florida, a professor posed this ethical dilemma to a core course in which she was enrolled with about 170 other first-year students.”)

Excerpted:

“You’re in a lifeboat. The wind is rising. The sea is rising. There are 19 others in the boat, too, but it can only hold 12 safely. What do you do?”

“‘Time to make some decisions! Who goes over? Who stays in? You’ve got to calculate’" 

"Is this not truly how our lives are constructed?” Allison said. “Who gets to go to school? Who gets invited to a small, special institution [and] told they have the possibility of genius? Who gets nurtured ­ led along and encouraged and shaped? Who has to stay home and watch the babies while mama cleans houses? … Who gets a scholarship? Who does not? … Is it a boat we live in? 

"It’s a lifeboat. It’s your life. It’s a nation. You are a citizen. … You are good enough to put one hand out and take the arm of the other. The wind’s rising; the boat’s bouncing; the water’s coming in: Some of us will have to hang over the side. Some of us will have to paddle. Because none of us is going down while I’m here. I’m giving up nobody. That’s not an ethical choice.”

But doing the ethical thing won’t make life easy, Allison said.

“I accept that I’m going to be miserable. And it’s gonna be hard,” she said. “The absolute answer to all the questions is: You will be afraid. It’ll hurt. There will be no simple way out. There will be no easy answer. You won’t feel better when it’s over.”

Some people in the water may lose their grip on the boat and float away. “But you will not have thrown them over,” she said. “You will not have made a pragmatic, calculated decision that your success depends on their failure. You will not have committed God’s ultimate sin. You will not have abandoned the genuine responsibility you have. You will be free. Miserable, stubborn and very powerful.”

“I want you to figure out the cost of saving everybody on the boat and share it out,” she said. “You are more free than you can imagine. You have more possibilities. You have more responsibilities. You have power you haven’t put your hands on yet. So think it through. Don’t let them give you pragmatic, evil answers. Don’t let them force you to make hurried, rushed decisions. … We need each other. We all of us need each other.”