How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

by Michael Schur

Imagine there’s an electrician (let’s call him Steve) working on a transformer at ESPN during a World Cup soccer match. Steve slips and falls behind the transformer—just gets really wedged in there—and the electrical equipment starts repeatedly jolting him. We could get Steve free, but doing so would require that we shut the transformer down for a few minutes, interrupting the broadcast. The strict consequentialist makes an easy call here: tens of millions of people would be so sad if the feed gets cut, so, sorry, Steve, you’ll just have to stay there and get continuously zapped until your bones are visible through your skin like in cartoons. But that answer leaves us cold. It feels wrong to let poor innocent Steve suffer so others can be happy. That’s what a lot of the problems with consequentialism boil down to, really—sometimes it simply feels like the conclusion we come to, when we tally up the total “pleasure” and “pain” resulting from a decision, just can’t be right.