Many years ago when I was in class 6, our town’s first major supermarket opened. It was on my way home from school and it had everything in the world, or so I thought. I would wander in there any chance I got and would turn my friends at school green with envy with tales of my ‘adventures’ there. One day my classmate, Mike, gave me 50 shillings and asked me to buy him a bottle of glue from the supermarket. As usual, I passed through the supermarket but I forgot all about the glue while admiring the toys.

The next day I apologised to Mike and assured him that I would get it to him the next day. That evening I went straight home to get the money from the shorts I had on the previous day only to find my mother breathing fire and pacing about the house. As soon as she saw me she demanded to know when I had become a thief. I was puzzled for a moment and Mom, deciding that I was attempting to stall then lie, followed up the question with a couple of vicious slaps to my person. She had a mean backhand that would extract instant confessions from me. I fell back still baffled with what was going on. She stood over me and waved a 50 shilling note in my face and demanded again when I had become a thief. Then I understood it all in a flash. Since I had forgotten the note in yesterday’s shorts she must’ve found them when doing the laundry and instantly concluded that I had stolen it. I started explaining to her that my friend Mike had asked me to buy him glue but before I could finish, another slap cut me off. By this time my brother and aunt came into the room wondering what was going on. Mom shut the door and proceeded to give me the whipping of my life! I begged and pleaded with her but she did not for a second believe my story and instead declared that she would not raise a thief. After her fury abated, I was soaked in tears and stinging all over from the beating.

The next day at school I still did not have any glue for Mike and he was beginning to get impatient and a little suspicious. I was between a rock and the deep blue sea. I had to resolve this problem quickly to avoid it escalating into a school issue. That evening, I did not waste time after school, I went straight home, opened Mom’s purse, and took Ksh. 50 and went to the supermarket. I got the glue but I also had a startling realisation; the Ksh. 50 note was wrapped around a Ksh. 200 note! Now I had a proper moral dilemma, what do I do with this extra money? I decided to spend it. I bought some sweets, oranges and my very first comic book, ‘The X-Men’.

I delivered the glue to Mike the next day, and my mother never found out that I had stolen 200 shillings from her. As far as I was concerned, this was compensation for the unfair thrashing I had received the previous day. Young as I was, I understood the principle of double jeopardy.

Analysis

We judge the morality of a decision according to 3 main elements:

When I ‘stole’ back the Ksh. 50, the moral objective of the decision wasn’t sound; I was stealing so right off the bat this was immoral. Secondly, when I discovered that I had taken more than was due I should have at least returned the Ksh. 200 but did I? No, I decided that I was owed damages and gladly spent my ‘compensation’. Besides, movies have taught me that criminals get caught when they return to the scene of the crime. I should have been a lawyer.

I intended to ‘steal’ back the Ksh. 50 to get Mike’s glue while avoiding an uncomfortable encounter with Mom. My intentions were good, but we all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. For example, King Saul spared King Agag (1 Samuel 15) and the best of the Amalekite sheep and cattle so that he could later sacrifice them to God despite being under direct orders to destroy them all. God rejected his sacrifice because of the blatant disobedience. His intention was good but the moral object, disobedience, wasn’t.

The circumstances surrounding my moral dilemma were strange. My mother’s reading of the situation was wrong and unforeseeable. Talking to her yielded nothing but I needed to make amends without causing further trouble. Later in life when I recalled this incident to Mom I understood her position. Back then my father had just passed on leaving her as the sole breadwinner of the family. Then came the infamous Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) by the IMF. It came to our lives in the form of retrenchment for Mum at the worst possible time. They say when it rains, it pours. Mom was under tremendous pressure and my young mind sensed that presenting my case would only yield more whipping.

Was my decision moral? At the time and for a long time afterwards, it seemed so to me. I was only getting back what was mine, and the extra money was just compensation. However, using the three elements of morality, wasn’t a moral decision because it failed the test of morality. I stole the 250 shillings, and nothing else makes it okay. Maybe I should have waited for Mom to calm down and then spoken to her, but hindsight is 20/20.

In 1945, right after the fall of Germany, the US turned its full attention to Japan, a relentless and unyielding enemy who never surrendered and fought for every inch of ground to the last man. The path to victory for the Americans would be paved with the blood of millions of soldiers. It is with this information that President Truman decided to drop 2 atomic bombs on the Japanese. The bombs instantly killed more than 200,000 people and the radiation after effects are still being felt to date.

The highest good is existence and life. President Truman decided that losing 1 million soldiers was worse than killing the 200,000 Japanese. He intended to preserve as much life as he could. The moral object was to win the war in the Pacific as quickly as possible and with as little death as possible. However, the bomb was also dropped as a demonstration of the might of the USA which isn’t moral. The circumstances surrounding the decision was that the world had been embroiled in a devastating war for about 5 years and it needed to end quickly for it threatened to consume the world. For these reasons, I think this was a moral decision by President Truman. I have also come to realise that the greater the scope of a leader, the more moral they have to be but paradoxically, the less likely that it is that the application of ideals will result in an optimal solution.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, the towering Russian writer, addressed the issue of morality in his book Crime and Punishment. The main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, a destitute university dropout, decides to murder a despicable pawnbroker who thrives on the affliction and poverty of the downtrodden. He rationalises that by killing her and taking her wealth, he will free himself from poverty and become magnanimous with the old woman’s money in service to humanity.

As he is planning the practical aspects of this murder, his mind also seeks to justify the act. He decides that the good which will come from using her money justifies her murder. Once he kills her, however, his soul rebels. He is plagued with guilt, confusion and disgust and his previous intellectual justifications crumble as he confronts the consequences of the murder. His intentions are noble, to help his fellow men. His circumstances were dire, he was poor, bankrupt and out of school for lack of money and he had cut himself off from society and thus had no one to anchor him to reality. His moral object, however, to kill the old pawnbroker was morally objectionable and turned the whole thing sour. He ended up confessing his crime and taking his punishment to pacify his spirit.

Thanos is a Titan in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He is intelligent, strong-willed and capable. His mission in life is to bring about balance in the universe because he theorised that the problems prevalent in the universe, poverty and want, disease and crime all stemmed from overpopulation which placed a strain on the universe. So he went about killing half the population of any planet he visited. He wreaked untold havoc wherever he went all in the name of making the world a better place. Later, he discovered that the quickest path to this goal was to acquire the five infinity stones and thus have the power to instantly and indiscriminately kill half of the universe with just the snap of his fingers! Thanos was such a capable character that he succeeded in doing this. I remember feeling numb and confused as I left the theatre when I watched the movie. I was confused because at some level I understood his logic and agreed with him but my conscience kept bothering me that something was wrong with the decision. He intended to have a peaceful and just universe teeming with life but his moral object was to kill half the universe! This was a completely immoral decision and I suspect that this movie was deeper than most people suspect.

Reflection

Making a moral decision can be both quite simple or extremely difficult depending on the moral object, intention and the circumstances surrounding the decision. For example, what was I supposed to do about Mike’s Ksh. 50? Telling him that my mother took it would only result in a confrontation with Mike or a teacher at school and a long drawn-out investigation which would probably lead to more whipping for me. It certainly was easier to steal it back and that is how moral decisions generally present themselves, they are not easy, they require some moral fibre and the willingness to be misunderstood and even punished for making them.
Secondly, a moral decision requires alignment of all 3 elements. It has to be morally objective, have good intentions and suit the circumstances. Applying only logic and rhetoric to make a moral decision will result in lopsided decisions like Thanos’ decision to kill half the universe. A strong moral grounding, and a high moral quotient, are much more important than all the justifications one can come up with.
It is difficult enough for human beings to make moral decisions and we have the advantage of emotional depth as well as natural language to elucidate our thoughts and feelings. Codifying morality into artificial intelligence will be quite a feat but for now, I do not think we should let A.I. make any moral decisions, especially ones that have severe consequences.