Which Decision Is The Best?

Thanks to my friend Miss ThamPs, I have found another voice teacher! I will be going down to his studio on Tuesday for a voice test, and if all goes well, I can start lessons already. Most likely I will only start in January or until after I found another job. Hopefully he takes me as his student, then I can try to achieve professional standard at last.

Somehow I get this gut feeling that this is the perfect voice teacher for me. His studio is quite near my place, his charges are very reasonable for a professional and established private voice teacher for an individual lesson, he has his own music management company, and he has a broad range of reportoires specialising in Western and Indonesian music (best way to learn the language!) and Gamelan ensembles.

Some stupid guy just insulted me big time! He said if I am so conservative how am I going to attract any guy? Guys will think that if I do not let them get physical with me even before we are together, how can they be sure to ask me out again since how are they going to have fun? If they want fun, forget it! I want someone who is serious and committed and know the difference between what is love and what is pure lust, and not someone who just expects me to sleep with him and then throw me aside.

I told him that finding the right person is based on communication, compatibility and understanding, not based on anything physical. He said guys all want to start off with something physical before they decide if the girl is worth keeping. Is that so?! None of my guy friends think like this! Where does this person get his values from?!

And the stupid guy just said that is why I am single since I do not allow intimacy. And I am likely to remain single for life if I maintain such an attitude. What does he know?! He can talk to my ex-boyfriends and hear from them the amount of intimacy I allow, if they are my boyfriends, not if they are just mere friends! I may not go all the way, but I definitely allow a lot of other things! Does he take me as a slut to just allow any mere guy to touch me all over and get so physical with me?! F*** off and stop insulting my honour and dignity as a lady! What a prick, and needless to say, a local. Foreign guys are getting more and more attractive everyday...

I received this email from K last week. It is a rather interesting scenario of decision-making, and how to make the best decision. Shall people make decisions based on the most logical issue, or shall they make decisions based on practicality, or shall people make decisions to benefit all?

Imagine that there was a group of children playing near two railway tracks, one in use while the other disused. Only one child was playing on the disused track while the rest were playing on the operational track.

The train was approaching and you were just beside the track interchange. It was not possible to stop the train but you could switch the track and divert the train to the disused track and save most of the kids.

However, that would mean that the lone child playing by the disused track would be sacrificed. Or would you rather save one child and let the train go on its way and kill the other children?

At first instinct, most people would choose to divert the train course and sacrifice only one child. To save most of the children at the expense of only one child was a rational decision most people would make, morally and emotionally, even though that was still wrong.

But on the other hand, perhaps the child playing on the disused track had in fact made the right decision to play at a safe place? Yet he had to be sacrificed just because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was.

This kind of dilemma happens around us all the time, be it in the office, community, society, politics and especially in a democratic country. The minority is often sacrificed for the interest of the majority, no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are, and how farsighted and knowledgeable the minority are.

The child who chose not to play with the rest on the operational track was sidelined. And in the case he was sacrificed, no one would shed a tear for him. The “proper” decision is not to try to change the course of the train because the kids playing on the operational track should have known very well that track was still in use, and that they should have run away if they heard the train’s sirens.

But if the train was diverted, that lone child would definitely die because he never thought the train could come over to that track, that was why he chose to play there in the first place. Moreoever, that track was not in use probably because it was not safe or closed for some other reasons.

If the train was diverted to the track, we could put the lives of all the passengers on board at stake. And in the attempt of saving a few kids by sacrificing one, hundreds of people’s lives might end up being sacrificed as well just for those few kids. So which decision is the best in a case like this?

While we are all aware that life is full of tough decisions that need to be made, we may not realise that hasty decisions may not always be the right one. What is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right.

Tough choice if you ask me. Of course the best thing would be to save all the children and all the passengers at the same time. But human nature is such that people do not sense danger until they plunge headlong into it, and the only one who sensed the danger in the first place and stayed away from it end up being the one in trouble just to save the skins of those in danger. That is what make life so interesting and complicated, no matter whether it is the right thing to do.