Is this moral dilemma familiar to you?
You are a simple citizen living in Nazi Germany, and you are hiding some Jews in your home. The SS comes to your house, and asks if you are housing any Jews. What do you say?
The dilemma, of course, is that if you say “no”, you are lying, and everyone knows that lying is wrong. However, your hideaways are safe.
If you say “yes”, you can pat yourself on the back for upholding honesty, and then watch the troops escort the Jews out of your house to their fate.
We struggle to find the best way out of this situation. How can you maintain the value of honesty while allowing people to walk to their doom? In my culture, our best response to this dilemma was usually answering honestly, and then hoping the Jewish families would miraculously not be found. Pretty lame, looking back on it.
The interesting thing is that this is only a dilemma for some people. It perplexes universalists and people who don’t accept that value ranking is a natural part of how we behave. Everyone else is trying to figure out where the actual dilemma is. [Read more…]