With Friends

[reverie]

*rewritten for a Veteran's Day service at Starr King School for the Ministry. I was the only self-identifying veteran in the room.

 

My name is Sean and I am Veteran of the U.S. Army that served from 1997 to 2005. Although, I never saw combat, I cannot help, but feel the service changed me -- changed something deep and fundamental in the way I perceive the world.

 

This became clear to me, last year at a Unitarian Universalist (UU) campus ministry meeting in North Carolina. We were doing Psych Problems to challenge our moral constructs. The problem we were working on, asked us to consider: “When is it right to take one life for the sake of another.” Some of you may be familiar with it: The Trolley Dilemma.

 

I bring it up, because in a room of over 20 UUs, I was the only one to choose the position of “in action” over “intervention.” This provoked strong reaction from my peers, and I was never able to persuade any of them to consider changing their position. To date, I’ve only encountered one other person that has agreed with me, or at least humored me because we were dating at the time. So I wrote a poem about it. This poem may evoke strong moral reaction, I apologize if this disturbs you.

 

 

 

With Friends

 

Picture five people

tied to a track,

and just before

the unfortunate,

on an opposing rail,

lies another person

likewise tied.

 

At this moment,

a trolley car will

likely crush the life

out of these five folk

unless someone

switches the rail

from a near tower,

which you just happen

to be imagined upon,

too far to do anything,

but watch and or

hit the control

that will lock

the switching rails

onto the diverging track

thus, shifting the fate

away from those

five innocent lives

to another waiting

as innocently below.

 

The trolley dilemma

tells me much about

myself. For in a group

of twenty friends, I alone

choose to let the car ride

on without the benefit

of my intervention.

 

Who am I to take

the life of one for

the sake of many? I say.

And my friends answer,

Well, who are we not

to save the lives of many

over the life of just one?

 

This bothers me

for a while. No one

seems to see why

I lament their thoroughly

considered utilitarianism.

 

Given the same problem

with a slightly different

turn where you must

push a fat man out of

a car to save your own

life as well as everyone

else aboard. Again,

I stand alone in choosing

to let the game play on

without my hand saving

what might as well be

the whole world

for all I care versus the guilt

of having to extinguish one

inconvenient life.

 

I am not so sure

why I see it differently

from my friends, yet

I do remember how justified

the explanation for dropping

another Fat Man over

the crowded lights of a far away

place called Nagasaki seemed

to a much younger version of myself,

safely tucked behind the

dissociating veil of a history

that I did have to live through.

 

Now, I am older

and have been taught

a little of what it is

to kill as a soldier,

conditioned to react to the human form

as rubberized targets to be shot down

as they popped up within the sights

of my M-203 equipped assault rifle.

Maybe failing to resist my conditioning

is what has shamed me, and now

I can no longer take for granted

the right to save the lives

of any number over

a single person killed

in a calculated wreck of cold blood.

Edited January 6, 2009 by reverie

[Mardrax]

It still is a beauty, well thought of, well performed. From memory, this version seems more calculated than the previous, and I'm not quite sure if that's an improvement. Though that might be just my memory playing up on me. A sleepless night spent doing homework tends to deprive of the will to look stuff up.

 

one small thing I'm assuming is a mistake: "I am can..." in the last stanza, 11th line.

Keep it up.

[reverie]

fixed! Thanks nice catch. I am the typo king. Doesn't matter how many times I reread a piece, I always miss something. Even reading out loud from print. I so need an editor.

 

I always worry if my edits improve or hurt the feelings I was going for when I write. Pretty much, I never want to stop editing my poems, which is great when I learn news skills, but bad when I forget what I was thinking about when I wrote it initially. Still, deep reflection sometimes can only happen when I years away from an experience, so it's give and take.

 

cheers