The love of mother

As I mentioned earlier in the previous blog, ethic is everywhere. It is in our daily activity, it is in our behavior towards a problem or situation, it is in business etiquette, etc. And we can even see it in the sagas which we had read during our childhood life. In the sagas, it always has the existence of two forces, moral and immoral. At the end of the sagas, the moral force will be the winner and most of the immoral sides are received punishment. We all believe that those immoral forces deserve to be punished. However, in some situations, have you ever thought that why the immoral characters choose to act unethically? Later, I would like to share a ethical dilemma which is in the famous and popular saga: Cinderella.

We all know that Cinderella is the unlucky young girl. She lives with her step-mother who has two daughters before married with Cinderella’s father. The step-mother gives all her love to the two naughty daughters. In contrast, Cinderella is given the enmity from the step-mother and the two step-sisters. One day, there is an announcement that the king invites all the beauties in town come to the party in order to choose the princess for the prince. The step-mother provides the most beautiful dress for her daughters to join the party and doesn’t give a chance for Cinderella to attend the party. She gives all the house works for Cinderella to do and ask her to finish it before she comes back from the party. Why is it so? It all comes from the love of the mother for her children. The step-mother thinks that Cinderella will be her daughters’ rival in the princess election party. From here, we can see that the step-mother is choosing unethical ways to treat Cinderella. You may think that this is not an ethical dilemma at all. This is just one of the details in the sagas. But yet, in real life, there also have similar situations. We also know that real life is different from sagas. Somehow, the saga is a reflection of the real society.

From this story, I would like to share true similar situation which I read from a newspaper few months ago in Vietnamese online newspaper. There is widow who had 2 sons. One of them is fosterling named Tung. The other is named Tien. Tung is orphan since he was 6 years old and he is her nephew. Later, the widow brought Tung back home and took-care him as her son. Even though Tung was just her fosterling, she loved him as Tien. Over the time, Tung and Tien grew up together, had a good job and implemented a son’s responsibility to the widow. They are good children in the thought of everybody. Unfortunately, Tung and Tien love the same girl. At first, both of them don’t know about that. Later, when they share their feeling to each other, they realized that and decided to have a fair competition. As a result, Tung has the girl with her heart. Tien was disappointed. He found that it’s hard to survive without the girl. Tung didn’t know that at all. However, their mother realized the case and consulted Tien to forget the girl. Despite his mother’s advice, he still gave her a tragedy love. Tien could not focus on work because of that reason. It leads to he became unemployment. The mother got hurt because of that. She tried her best to introduce another girlfriend for him. However, it doesn’t work. Besides that, she could not tell this situation to Tung as well because she didn’t want Tung faced to a dilemma situation. The ethical dilemma occurred from this moment. The mother was thinking that she should take back the girl from Tung for Tien or she just ignored Tien with the broken heart. If she helped Tien to get the girl, it would be unethical for her standard of behavior. But yet, she really could not stand when seeing Tien downed day by day. It’s hard for her to choose either Tung or Tien because both of them are her children. Nevertheless, she chose to act unethically, she tried to create the misunderstanding between Tung and his girlfriend in order for them to break up. All of her bad acts came from the love for her son. Although she took-care of Tung since he was child, he’s just her fosterling. It’s hard her to love Tung as much as Tien.

From the situation above, it can be said that if everyone of us do act unethically, it musts have a reason. We cannot simply give a judgment on what they are doing and how they do that. It is because we were not them, we cannot understand them as they understand themselves. Sometimes, we think that it’s hard for us to tolerate a person. But yet, when we are facing the same situation, will we do the same thing? It’s a tough answer. Ethic is an abstract, we cannot touch it, just can feel it.

who should we choose to save?

Ethics is an emerged topic which is excess in number of articles. It is all about the judgment, defending and even recommendation on the concept of right or wrong conduct. We can see ethics is everywhere. It is widely in social life, working world and even in business context. Somehow, it’s tough for us to give comment of ethical or unethical in an issue. It is because that issue is right in some aspects but it is wrong in the others. Today, I would like to share an ethical dilemma which I’d learned from a Hong Kong drama. Although it’s just a drama, it mays happen in the real world. And this dilemma is necessary for us to look at it as an ethical lesson.

The story which I’m sharing now is about a surgery doctor who holds in hand the survival of 2 patients. One is a good student and virtuous child in a normal family; he contributed to the society by volunteering in social activities and has a good future. The other is a dissipated dude, playboy as well as drug addict in a rich and famous family. In an unusual day, a horrible accident occurs in front of the hospital. There were few dozen people are in injury. Among of them, several are in serious cases. Therefore, at that moment, the hospital is extremely in demanding. All of the doctors, nurses are very busy. It can be said that no one is available for extra patients at that time. Unfortunately, there is found that two patients are in serious injury as well. They are the ones I mentioned earlier. Additionally, the rich child is the one who cause the accident. Two of them need to be implemented brain surgery immediately. Otherwise, they will die. However, there is just only one doctor available at that minute. The ethical dilemma is from here. Who should he choose to save? He will save the pious child or the rich immoral man who cause the incident? Before the time he comes out with the decision, there is a nurse against him and suggests him to save the pious child. It is because the rich guy is the one who cause the accident. He does not deserve to be saved. Eventually, he decides to save the rich man. Unfortunately, the brain surgery is fail due to there is not enough blood to supply, that guy dies. The pious child dies as well.

Before the ethical class, I thought that the problem could be end there. The drama just wants to convey how good the doctor is in his decision making. However, after taking the class, I remembered about this case and realized that there is an ethical issue in this part of the drama. The doctor reasons that he decided to save the rich immoral guy because of the higher survival percentage. In his point of view, this may be the right decision. Meanwhile, the difference of survival proportion is low. It means that if the doctor chooses to save the moral boy first, the saving percentage will be almost the same. People question that the rich guy is not deserved to be saved, why he saved him. As a conscience doctor, he supposes to save the virtuous boy. Therefore, in other perspective, his decision is unethical because he intends to catch the attention from the rich man family in order to support his future career.

Let’s assume that this is a true situation, we are as a doctor. Should we choose to save the rich person who caused the accident is in higher percentage of survival but the differences of that proportion is low; or we make a choice to save the moral boy? If we choose to save the moral boy, after the surgery, we have nothing, no reward and even are sued by the rich family. If the rich guy is to be saved and survive after surgery, we will get reward and have good development in the future career but we will receive negative comment from other people.  How should we make the decision? For me, I will do what I think it is the right thing to do. For my decision, I will choose to save the guy who causes the accident. It is because he has higher survival percentage; even though it’s just a little bit. Higher is higher, we cannot negate it. In the context of saving people, we should not see who is good, who is bad. The most important object is to save the one who has most ability to survive rather than react according to emotion. If we put too much emotion at work in saving people, it mays not be efficient at all.

In conclusion, I would like to say that ethic is just black and while, right and wrong. It’s not maybe right or maybe wrong. Besides that, the concept of ethical of unethical is depend on the person who defining the problem.