THE TROLLEY DILEMMA

1890 SAN FRANCISCO STREET CAR

PERSONAL OR IMPERSONAL

I was sitting in a relatively secluded section of my auto dealership this morning with the time to finally open a book I had purchased at O’Hare airport.  It is brilliantly written by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, and titled Incognito, The Secret Lives of the Brain.  It’s a read that will give you a prefrontal workout illuminating the realization that “Our brains run mostly on autopilot, and the conscious mind has little access to the giant and mysterious factory that runs below it”

Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be an invisible force in this world today whose primary purpose is to sew division, hate and fear among our society these days.  Names and labels are being floated in the air with the rapidity of a balloon release at a political convention.  Eagleman posits the existence of competing rational and emotional subsystems within our human brains and explains how philosophers have fleshed them out with a scenario called the Trolley Dilemma.  He sets the stage of a runaway trolley barreling towards five track repairmen.  You have the quick decision to throw a switch that will divert the trolley to another track where only one repairman will be killed.  Most people would throw the switch.  I was actually in a similar situation during college on a summer job as a Santa Fe gandydancer repairing railroad tracks and switches, but that’s another story.    

Now we’re presented with an alternative scenario where you are on a footbridge over the tracks next to an obese man.  You could push him over onto the tracks with both hands to derail the trolley and save the five workers.  Most people would not push the man.  Don’t both scenarios save five men and sacrifice one man?  Eagleman writes “It changes the problem from an abstract, impersonal math problem to a personal, emotional decision.   

My point in writing this post is that I’ve had the wide experience in my lifetime to work beside a wide swath of human beings of all colors and persuasions.  That experience has enabled me to see the world from the perspective of establishing a personal relationship with a whole lot of diverse folks.  I can never walk in their shoes, but I can hopefully empathize with their lives on a more personal level.  I sincerely believe that we can work together in brotherhood to form a more perfect union by simply getting to know one another better.