I found myself thinking along similar lines about a year ago when I was faced with a legitimate moral dilemma. Situations which I can view in the abstract, or which I’m distanced from, I can generally apply dispassionate cost-benefit analysis to; but if I actually find myself in a position where I have to make decisions with moral consequences, I’ll find myself agonising over what kind of person it makes me.
There’s an extra frustrating element to this, because some decisions only have moral consequences as far as “what kind of person they make me”, and with enough practice, it’s easy to find ignoble motives for any option I might select when given such a decision. This can be quite debilitating, but thankfully I don’t face too many moral dilemmas.
I found myself thinking along similar lines about a year ago when I was faced with a legitimate moral dilemma. Situations which I can view in the abstract, or which I’m distanced from, I can generally apply dispassionate cost-benefit analysis to; but if I actually find myself in a position where I have to make decisions with moral consequences, I’ll find myself agonising over what kind of person it makes me.
There’s an extra frustrating element to this, because some decisions only have moral consequences as far as “what kind of person they make me”, and with enough practice, it’s easy to find ignoble motives for any option I might select when given such a decision. This can be quite debilitating, but thankfully I don’t face too many moral dilemmas.