1) readers sent in Photoshopped versions of the rat with ridiculous humorous things for it to do while it was trapped (playing Solitaire, etc.)
2) the comments were FILLED with heated back and forth about what was the moral thing to do in this situation. Kill the rat or pull out all the stops to save it? Call the fire department, get a crow bar, spray on the WD-40, grease it down with Vaseline... or... put a bag over its head and stomp it?
Opinions were about evenly mixed. Some wanted to kill the rat for compassionate reasons. Others because it was a pest, and, hey, how often do you get one of NYC's billions of rats to stand still long enough to bump it off? Still others joked about lawnmowers and golf clubs... and worse. Those who wanted to help it felt sad watching it struggle, or liked rats, or simply didn't want to be the sorts of people who passed a fellow living creature in pain and did nothing to help. Some even went as far as to beg the Gothamist editors to find out where the sidewalk in question was, so they could go down there themselves and try to help.
I was amazed how passionate people got. And it got me thinking about how morally complicated we humans can be. In war, a man may be our enemy, yet still our brother - we shoot him one moment, then patch him up the next. Are we hypocrites, or simply dealing with competing human instincts for compassion and defense? Animals do it too - I just saw something yesterday about animal mothers taking in babes of other species - even a leopard nursing the offspring of the babbon she had just killed.
So here we see people laughing, callous, and mean... and people over-the-top empathetic. What are we humans? Just an illogical bunch of conflicting impulses we try to cram into some cohesive ethical code?
I think so.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of rats, but I don't fear and loathe them the way I do cockroaches and water bugs. It's an atavistic thing. What would I have done? Faced with the moral conflict of aversion to rats, knowing they are pests and wanting less of them in NYC in a general sense, but not wanting to be their personal executioner, feeling compassion for this singular rat's painful struggle... I think I'd have done one of two things. Walk on by, or call 311. Freeing a rat to go about its merry way making MORE pests for NYC to deal with doesn't seem right. Killing it myself is more than I want to take on. Walking away seems a fair option, since it isn't, strictly speaking, my problem or my societal duty (I am not a rat catcher by trade). But if I wanted to be diligent, I could CALL the rat catcher and alert him to do his thing. Thus, the 311 call.
Subscribe to receive updates from Everyday Ethics or follow us on Twitter!
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
In this episode we see the essence of moral empathy. When we perceive a living creature as an individual, not just a member of a class or category, we are able to see something of ourselves in that creature. But when we reduce a living being to a category of evil or undesirability we are capable of cruelty with little or no remorse. That is why tribalism, war, extreme politics, extreme religion, and other human institutions of alienation must strip away individuality and assign a stereotype or a category to others.
Hi Hillary! I think you may be disregarding one important factor in how people react in such a situation: What their past experiences and biases might be. These pre-judgments and memories can often determine how you will behave in a particular circumstance, because you remember what you did, or should have done, or wanted to do, before.
In my case, a childhood spent on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Chinatown in the 1970s, when those neighborhoods were swarming with rats, make me less sympathetic. I remember my great-uncle's building on Eldridge Street, where there was a serious rat problem around the garbage cans on the ground floor. I even hunted them with a pellet pistol once, and killed a rat. They were a threat to the health of that building's residents, of that there was no doubt. So in this case I would have probably stomped the rat. But I wouldn't have felt good about it. No guilt, to be sure, but no pleasure either. Necessary, and dirty.
And frankly, this is what the rat catcher would do. Rat catchers kill rats. So if you call 311, why not just do it yourself? You are already equally culpable, because you know the consequences of your call. You do not actually escape "more than I want to take on" if you call 311. That being the case, I accept that responsibility, and would do it myself. It is quicker, after all, if a humanitarian excuse is needed.
But to get back to my original point -- I have memories of having done this before -- so it is very easy for me, having already crossed that threshold in the past.
Maybe Alan is right that past experiences dictate present reactions, but I don't agree. I have had to kill a mouse or two in my life, and with good reason. But my first reaction was to save the rat, and I'd like to think I would have. He is a living creature, and while I may not value his life as much as my own or my fellow human beings, I do think that unless his suffering will inevitably, or unavoidably, lead to death, the he deserves a chance to life. He is afraid and possibly in pain, and while that fear and suffering may not be the same we humans understand it, that does not make it any less real or any less important. Who am I to decide his death. If I can save him, I will.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.