Suppose you had seven children.
All of them, having reached the age of maturity, were jobless and were encouraged to find a job.
Child one keeps applying for different jobs in the technology industry but nobody will accept them. However, they keep trying and trying. They are like Sisyphus. They also aren’t doing anything as they wait.
Child two makes themselves exclusive to doing odds and ends for a decent amount of money. While child one thinks jobs should be sought via the application process, child two is averse enough to this that the inconsistency of what they do day to day is intentional.
Child three applied an actual application for an “actual” job and found one. The catch? It’s an organized crime job. However, it’s not immoral even though it’s illegal. They’re the personal household assistant of the mob boss. They too get paid immensely.
Child four also applied an actual application for an “actual” job and found one. The catch? It’s not illegal but has ethical issues involved. They mastermind ways to monitor and deal with those considered national threats. They too get paid immensely.
Child five, too, applied an actual application for an “actual” job, but it’s something they’re utterly terrible at doing, skill-wise. They’re tasked with therapy but have so little skill it’s considered useless. Child five, despite this flaw, gets paid decently by the office building.
Child six applied for a job and was appointed into one that had the completely foreseeable result of causing many dozens of people to lose their own job. They maintain a scenery-modifying machine which caused and still threatens to cause many scenery workers to become like spare cogs wandering the streets in search of a purpose. Child six too gets paid well, despite also having a version of their job that undermines the importance of the profession itself.
Finally, child seven is a volunteer, one with no ethical or legal issues involved, no issues finding a job, and no limits whatsoever in what they can do for others, and they do it all for free. However, after a few months of doing it, they think “that’s enough for me” and they never do a deed again.
One day, you realize you are passing away and summon all seven children to your home. You have specific things, all of which only one child can inherit, and due to the nature of these things, it has to be the child whose deeds make them out to seem the worthiest, as it’s the only tiebreaker. Which child do you prioritize as being the best candidate for the one with the highest worth?
I understand that when you ask a “would you rather” question and someone says neither, that takes all the fun out of it, but this isn’t one of those questions.
Maybe it’s how you framed it, with these people being our children, because nothing you’ve mentioned in the hypothetical would affect how much I value each kid.
It’s like setting up a trolley dilemma with two cars on the tracks, and asking if you’d rather save the red car, or the black car. The question is moot because I don’t have any useful information. How many people are in them? Who are the people? I don’t care if the destroyed car is red or black, just like how my children’s jobs have no relevance on what I will to them.
Might be worth taking a moment to think about why YOU value these things (or think others do) enough to ask the question.
Whoever decided that?
Granted the trolley dilemma is another good comparison. I was split on how to phrase the end, whether personally or with a realistic scenario or with an unrealistic one or with a mandate (I see that would’ve never worked). I chose what I thought would make it seem the most question-esque.
I did. And it’s what led me to ask the question.
I’m curious if/how your view has changed after getting so much pushback on your question.
Well, let’s see… I got quite a few different people who said they misunderstood what I was saying but with very few of them agreeing on what was the hard-to-understand part, one person who said I sounded like an asshole based on the completely voluntary decision to assume I was projecting myself as the parent of all things, one person who said this sounded like I was asking for homework help (probably the most innocent of the inquirers, nothing wrong with homework help), one person who either genuinely thought I was a bot or tried to belittle me by saying I was one, a bit of humor at least, and a neutral opt-out. When the only consensus is “this person should be let down”, does it not come off as mobbing? In what way am I supposed to feel changed after that?
My best teacher at times can be constructive criticism, given I can ask questions about it. Alas, if anything is stunting my ability to self-build, it’s people who look everywhere and see “lolcows” and people to disdain rather than honest novices, in this case one who struggles with communication/expression and isn’t satisfied with that.