Our Binary World

Day 18 of the @BestSelfCo Edison Deck Challenge created my first “I’m not doing this anymore” reaction. The card I chose came from the "Would you Rather . . . " section. It was repugnant and shocking to me. I wanted to put it back into the deck, or more accurately chuck it into the trash along with the rotting compost and unrecyclables. The fact that I made a commitment to not shy away from the uncomfortable, compelled me to forge ahead. So here goes: the prompt reads "Would you rather end the life of one human or 100 puppies and kittens?"

My immediate reaction was to ask, "Under what circumstances?" Is the one human a serial killer and I am fighting to avenge the world of a beast? Or is it someone's grandmother, parent, or perhaps a Nobel Prize winner? Are the 100 puppies and kittens harboring a lethal virus that would infect all of the animal kingdom (think Mad Cow disease) and their demise would stop the spread? Or is it just a random collection of adorable puppies and kittens gathered for a sick psychological experiment (i.e. Squid Game). And then I thought, "Who would write such a horrible prompt?" and I imagined a bunch of people without life experiences (loss, death, etc.) thinking, "Now this will be entertaining!"

As I took a deep breath and prepared to tackle the dilemma, it hit me. This is a binary question and it mirrors the social mindset of our current world be it political, social, or technological. Yes, perhaps the author of the prompt came from the coding world where binary works. The prompt asks the person holding the card to make a choice: human life or 100 puppies and kittens. It gives no space to contemplate whether the choice is valid and whether we are even asking the right question. We see it all around us: vaccination or anti-vaccination, Republican or Democrat, global warming or a hoax, critical race theory critic or owning our history, my way or the highway. Is this what critical thinking looks like?

In eighth grade, I had an English teacher that taught us how to diagram and parse a sentence by using our favorite lyrics to Casey Kasem's Top 40 (for my younger readers - he was a radio DJ). In doing so, we not only learned how to identify the articles, nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. in a sentence, we also identified the case (past/present/future). We were encouraged to reframe a lyric to express a different outcome. See the example below:

Would you rather / end the life / of one human / or / 100 puppies / and / kittens /

What makes the prompt binary and positional is the conjuction "or" and the assumption that there are only two options: this or that. That is the bait. The truth of the prompt comes in the first three words and in the adverb (an adverb is a word that modifies or gives meaning to the verb) "rather". If you remove the adverb, we have the sentence:

Would you end the life of one human or 100 puppies and kittens?

I think most of us would have an easy time answering the question without the word "rather" or at least I would hope so. By inserting "rather" it assumes that we have a preference and ending a life or lives is/are non-negotiable. And for me, that assumption, leads us down a path of no return, asking us to make a morally reprehensible choice. After taking a moment to contemplate the prompt, I choose not to give a binary answer and tackle the prompt as follows:

• I would not end the life of one human or 100 puppies and kittens. I do not have information that would give any moral reason to end a life of a human or an animal, let alone multiple animals.

• I do not have a preference on ending life, period.

• 1 human:100 puppies and kittens is a made up ratio without any relational correlation.

In conclusion, I believe the prompt asks the wrong question and solves the wrong problem. The problem as I see it is in the question itself, it assumes that we have lost the ability to be a critical thinker. It contemplates that someone has a preference in voluntarily ending a life and there is no other outcome, and it assumes that one type of life has more value than another. I chose not to take the bait and give a binary answer. Life is complicated, precious, and deserves to have more consideration than an ill-chosen adverb and conjunction. And for the record, that "best self" card makes mighty fine compost.