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Debate Score:18
Arguments:21
Total Votes:18
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 What would you do? (18)

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flewk(1193) pic



What would you do?

Just remembered a lecture from a long time ago.

 

Assume you are an aid worker somewhere in Africa.

One night, you hear hurried footsteps followed by rapping at your door. You open the door to find a young women carrying her babies. She pleads for you to listen to her story.

 

She tells you she has had the misfortune of having twins. Her village elders will kill both of her children if they ever found out. She needs your help to figure out which baby to get rid of.

 

What do you do? (Be as creative and as elaborative as you deem necessary.)

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1 point

she obviously disagrees with the customs of her tribe. therefore, move both her and her children to a place and community whose laws and customs better represent her ideology.

flewk(1193) Disputed
1 point

Read the description again. She wants your help to pick the twin to get rid of.

You can move her regardless of her beliefs, but your justification doesn't work.

Nomoturtle(857) Disputed
1 point

she isn't overjoyed at the possibility of keeping both children? she is so stubborn she would stick to her original idea of killing one? fine. since there aren't really any ways of judging which life could be worth more at that point, it's just a 50/50. whether you kill the one she will never see again or raise it somewhere, it makes little difference to her.

An aid worker in Africa.....I would probably tell her to leave one child here with me. It may be hard for her to leave her child, but I'd rather the child survive. I'd hopefully be able to go back to America and find a family suitable to raise the child.

1 point

Yes. This would keep both children alive. It would also take quite a bit of your time and resources. You probably would need to explain this to your supervisor and terminate the aid work at that point.

When you do put the child into the foster system, would you keep track of his/her status? If the child does not get matched, would you adopt the child as your own?

I just wanted to point out the consequences of the decision.

I would keep track of the child until I know it's in a good family's hands. Which may be hard to tell. If the child doesn't get matched I'm not sure I would be able to handle the child. I'd have to look for another center for it to go to.

1 point

Well whenever a stranger asks me something difficult here in Spain I pretend not to speak the language. I guess if I were in Africa I'd do the same :)

1 point

Well, the assumption is that you are doing aid work voluntarily. Perhaps, this scenario is not suited to your tastes.

1 point

I would invite her to make a pact with me by pointing out that I won't tell her my problems if she doesn't tell me hers. In the biggest money sponge in the world, being Africa, hard luck stories abound in the 1000s every day. If anyone was sufficiently stupid to offer assistance under such circumstances the jungle press would spread the news in seconds and the foolish Good Samaritan would have bongos around their door like flies round the brown stuff on a hot day. We're bombarded with pathetic advertisements showing sick and dying Bongo children in the hope that the well rehearsed images will pluck the heart strings of the gullible and they'll send their hard earned dosh to the cause so the directors can spend the summer in the Cote de Azure.

flewk(1193) Clarified
2 points

You should probably read the description again. It is implied that you have volunteered with an aid organization.

Your response has nothing to do with the description. It reads like a uninformed rant.

1 point

Aid workers are not required to respond to every hard luck story to which they are subjected. Your most improbable scenario could, and almost certainly would, incur unnecessary problems and impede the achievement of the overall goals of the aid organization of which your dumb worker is only one of a team. For instance, if the Bongo chief and/or the tribe's witch doctors heard of the aid organization's interference in their customs and practices then any unilateral action by an individual aid worker could have the shrunken heads of their work comrades dangling from the spear of the chief Bongo. At best such a situation should be referred to the senior management team for a professional and collective decision and not left to the arbitrary whims of some sanctimonious individual. Insofar that it is not at all appropriate for meddling aid workers to interfere with the traditions and conventions of the native population my first post was the correct line to adopt.

flewk(1193) Disputed
1 point

Aid workers are not required to respond to every hard luck story to which they are subjected.

No one is asking you to respond to every situation. The purpose of this debate is to respond to this situation.

You are pushing your own agenda onto this debate instead of actually responding to it.

Your most improbable scenario could, and almost certainly would, incur unnecessary problems and impede the achievement of the overall goals of the aid organization of which your dumb worker is only one of a team.

Actually, it did happen. It was a lecture on tough decisions faced in real life and how to assess emotional situations objectively.

If you think life always turns out how you want it to, then you have not been living life.

Insofar that it is not at all appropriate for meddling aid workers to interfere with the traditions and conventions of the native population my first post was the correct line to adopt.

If you read the description, there is nothing to suggest that you should meddle. That is left up to you.

Again. Stop with the confirmation bias. Your agenda is affecting your reading comprehension.

1 point

Listen you scum sucking pig, this is an open forum and designed to be a platform on which people can express their opinions. Dirt balls like you will not stop me from responding to any issue about which I have an opinion. If my opinion doesn't agree with your shallow thinking then that's hard shit son. Now go and yodel up the canyon.

flewk(1193) Disputed
1 point

It has nothing to do with the validity of your opinion. You are ignoring the topic of this debate and have injected your own agenda.

Coldfire(1014) Disputed
1 point

Our goal is to build CreateDebate into an incredibly useful learning tool that will help groups of people to sort through issues, viewpoints and opinions so that consensus and understanding can be reached and better decisions can be made.

1 point

Were you always stupid or did you fall off a ladder recently and land on your nut? I have already stated my opinion that I feel it would be wrong for one individual to make a decision independently of the team management in case of jeopardizing the wider and long term aims of the aid organization. In other words the individual should have told the mother to return to her village and abide by the established traditions of her tribe. There is no room for emotional decisions in such circumstances and the aid worker as well as her colleagues have no right in interfering with the customs of the indigenous populations of any nation. Aid workers, missionaries and all the other sanctimonious charities try to apply western standards in situations about which they know little or nothing, usually with devastating consequences as we have witnessed in Iraq and Libya. Once more I state; my initial response was the correct solution.

1 point

I didn't actually read your rant about bongos. If this was included in there, it might be a good idea to change your style of communication.

1 point

It's P.R. fools like you who have the Bongos feeling persecuted and sorry for themselves. I'm Irish and am referred to as a 'Paddy' or a 'Mick'. The ''Yanks' call the English 'Limies'. A Welshman is referred to as 'Taffy' a Scotsman as 'Jock', a Frenchman as a 'Frog' a German as a 'Crout' and so forth. None of these groups take exception to their 'pet' names so why should the Bongos. A Bongo is a Bongo whether they're in Africa or Detroit.

flewk(1193) Clarified
1 point

I didn't read it because it was unintelligible, not because it was offensive. Like I said earlier, if you want to communicate, don't use rants.

1 point

Why wouldn't the village elders be a better judge of what child to "get rid of?"

Why would they kill both of them?

Why doesn't she consider that an option?