HERE IS ONE FOR YOU:

You are a superhero who cannot die (That is your only superhero power.) travelling in a plane that will crash, there are only enough parachutes for half of the number of passengers on board to survive, so choices have to be madE you are given the task of deciding who lives. How would you choose who lived?

Tricky eh, you could use a random number thing like all those with odd or even dates of birth, or those with a certain letter of the alphabet starting their surname. Then again you could go with looks and or personality. Or if you had the time you could ask people to justify being a survivor, if they have important jobs, or responsibilities like children or that they have just discovered the cure for cancer. Then again you could just declare a free for all and let them fight it out letting the ones with the strongest will to live do so.

The only thing that you can be sure of is that 99% of the passengers will want to be a parachute winner. I say 99% as someone might think that they are too old, they to have lived their life and it’s time for them to go. Or some one says that they have a terminal illness so why bother surviving only to die in a few months. That’s both fair and generous; however it is also rooted in self-interest.

One issue bothers you though, the losers die that’s a given and after all they had their chance. What about the survivors though? How did they turn out? What if despite the huge piece of fortune they either live to be unhappy, failed marriages or an addiction of some kind. Or they never make proper use of their chance by taking things or people for granted etc. Or worse still go on to hurt somebody or be a criminal, or a traffic warden, or someone who exploits others. Some part of the responsibility for those peoples misery and either the misery they cause to yet more people, has to come back and rest squarely at your door.

Then there is the anger and the envy that you create and have to be responsible for. The anger of those who died plus their families and loved ones, not just for who or what they lost but maybe for the things that they will never have. Envy from both the relatives of the dead and from within the group of survivors is almost inevitable. They may never have a nice house, or a full stomach. They may never know security and freedom or fulfilment, and you contributed to that.

Perhaps your starting to think you should have never have got on the plane in the first place and not just because your carbon footprint will kill off another few mortals. Life after all is unfair and winners and losers have always been. You may be a superhero but you are not god, any way you did what you thought was right and since somebody would have decided then it was harmless. You are not responsible for what happens because you were doing the right thing.

Obviously this is a “hypothetical” question, but what if today or yesterday you did something very simple, an ordinary every day thing that you and millions of others do. You make winners and losers; you bring lasting happiness to one or two. However you also bring misery and death to hundreds more, all in the simple act of buying a lottery ticket.