You have a choice to make. In front of you stand two people, but only one is allowed to live. The other must die. Do you save Person A, a kind, thoughtful human being, or do you save Person B, a child rapist?
If you believe that each life is equally valuable and sacrosanct, the response to this choice is indifference. If that is what you truly believe, it matters not whether Person A or Person B is the one who lives because the outcome of both choices is the same; one human life is lost, another is preserved.
But if you believe that some humans are more valuable, more worthy of life, than others, then the choice is obvious. You choose to kill the child rapist to save the kind, thoughtful individual.
My instinct tells me that the majority of the population would opt for the latter, killing the child rapist. And what this indicates, whether we like it or not, is that we think some lives are more valuable than others. Those who are close to us are more valuable than those who are far away. Those who are similar are more valuable to us than those who are different. Those who we love are more valuable than those we hate.
Is that wrong? Is it common sense, or a cruel, inhumane logic? At this point in time, I don’t know. But what I do know is that it’d be good if we all stopped pretending that everyone is worth the same to everybody, if we stopped putting up this facade of goodness and took responsibility for our own bias.
Swell & Cut 