fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, April 10]

"There's a very famous story on this world," Anakin began. "Of the lady or the tiger. For those of you not from this world, the short version is there was a fictional king with his own sense of justice--instead of a court system, he had an arena with two doors. Behind one door was a beautiful woman, handpicked by the king. Behind the other was a tiger. If you chose the tiger, you were eaten and declared guilty. If you chose the lady, you were considered innocent and married the lady. The king didn't care about your previous marital status or sexual orientation, apparently."

He began pacing. "One day the king discovered that his daughter had been having an affair with someone far below her station, so the man was arrested and tossed into the arena. Now the princess knew which door has what behind it, and her lover looked up to her for advice. She had two choices: watch her love die, or marry another woman. The story ends with the princess telling him which door to open, but leaves us hanging as to what waited behind it."

Anakin smiled. "Your task today is two-fold. First, pair up with a classmate and decide what the princess did. Then tell me what you would have done in the princess's place."

Stranded - Plumb

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Tiger chow or happily ever after?

"Anyone who loved another person would never let them die like that." Karal sounded very, very certain. "I would pick the door with the person behind it, and not the tiger, and the greater my love for the person, the easier that choice would be."

"Either way, he'll never be yours again," Rikku said softly. "He'll either be dead or hers. So you send him to the door with a girl behind it and you hope she's not all that pretty and you hope he misses you and you hate her and you feel like someone's ripping all of your guts out. But ... picking the tiger? That's horrible. And selfish. And a hundred other things. And ... and I think even just ... being selfish, it would hurt more, watching him scream and run and be ripped apart. Even more than if he loved her and never looked back."

Reno shrugged.

"So, let the guy marry the other chick. He'll be alive, that's somethin' better than in a buncha' nasty bits inside a tiger, yo." He tilted his head, considering. "It's another day alive to think of a better way out. Killin' him is just too freakin'... final."

"Happily ever after," Mel decided. "There's an option to track him down afterwards for illicit lovin', right?"

"It would near kill me to do it, but I hope I would have the strength to pick the other lover, and not the tiger," Romeo admitted. "Alive and with another has to be the better choice." People kept telling him that, right?

"I'd tell him to pick the door with the girl," Jenny said. "Because if I could watch him be ripped to shreds by a tiger I didn't give a damn about him in the first place, and 'because I'm a jealous bint' is a stupid reason for anyone to die. Then once he's married the chick we can just carry on behind her back. Or maybe he falls in love at first sight with the chick behind the door, but that's a chance I'd have to take."

"I'd choose the door with the person behind it," Lana said quietly. "At least that way they'd have a chance of happiness and a good life."

"Most definitely the door with the person," Andrew said with a nod.

Adah had been sitting mostly quietly, listening to everyone else's answered and, based on them, decided that writing hers wouldn't do today. It would make her feel like she was embarrassed, or hiding something of her nature that was clearly against all of the others, who she felt might possibly be lying to themselves a little.

She lifted her chin, clearing her throat (since she hadn't spoken a word since Sunday). "Tiger," she said, a little hoarse in her throat from disuse, but with unfailing confidence.

"Is this a trick question?" Anemone asked. "If the people involved have any brains at all, they do the marriage, and then the newlyweds ignore each other and carry on as usual. This entire set-up assumes that the other woman has nothing better to do than marry some accused criminal, and there's no way that's true. It makes it too easy."

"I'd rather he be alive," Summer said simply.

"I would have the princess choose the door with the woman behind it. If she loved so deeply, then wouldn't she rather feel heartbroken herself, then to feel the guilt over killin' such an innocent man when his crime had only been to love her?"

"If I was truly in love with someone, I would never let them be killed," Teyla said. "It would be difficult to lose them to another person, but if they were killed, they would be lost forever. At least if they were with someone else, they would have a chance to find something close to happiness again."

"As far as I can see, it really doesn't matter because he's out of her life for good," said Hoshi. "She might as well get him out of her life and move on. But I guess she should probably pick the door with the woman. He's not worth killing."

"You don't kill someone you love," Harry said flatly. Unless she was trying to get you enthralled by a crazed wizard and she happened to be in the line of fire...but he wasn't going to think about that. Much.

Ethics [Thursday, April 10]

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