Should We Have Let Her Go?

In the show The Walking Dead, nearly the entire population has been transformed into, you guessed it, zombies. We always joke around about how a zombie apocalypse is in our near future, but what if it actually happened? What if you saw nearly all of your loved ones turned into flesh-eating monsters, and you had to sacrifice everything to keep the few survivors safe? This is the reality for the main character of the show, Rick. By the third season of the show, the group that Rick is with has changed drastically, but this group of people trust each other.. that is until a woman named Michonne comes along and divides the group because of the decisions that they are forced to make. 

Michonne

The group had to choose between loyalty to another, larger, more powerful group, and loyalty to someone who had been loyal to them. This woman, Michonne, had betrayed "the Governor" of the larger group and he wanted his revenge on her. The smaller group had taken Michonne in after she got away from the Governor and had to choose between giving her back to the Governor and letting her get killed, or waiting for the Governor to come after them all and give his revenge on all of them. 

Utilitarianism is the thought that there are "billions of beings competing for resources,  [so] the benefit of the whole requires self-sacrifice" (Salazar 1393). Based on this statement, a utilitarianist would have given Michonne over to the Governor because that would've meant that they had more supplies and resources for the group with one less person in it. With the very limited food and supplies that the group had, a utilitarian would have understood that giving Michonne over to the other group would have benefited them. The group did not know Michonne well at all, so they weren't sure if they could even trust her. Utilitarianists also feel that "one should not be self-interested very often" (Salazar 1393). In this case, Michonne should have been willing to give herself over to the Governor because it would benefit the group and she would be being selfless.

The Governor

A Kantian would agree with the groups decision not to give Michonne over to the governor because of their belief that you should "[hold] people accountable to their inner value of humanity". By choosing not to let Michonne die, they were acting morally and not letting a tyrant (the Governor) force them to do something that they knew was an unethical thing to do. The categorical imperative "restricts what is rational for people to want" (Salazar 1392). This means that even though someone may want to do something, if it is not the ethical thing to do, they should not do it. So, even though giving Michonne to the Governor would have been the easier thing to do because it would mean they would be on the other groups' good side, Rick chose to not let her be killed because he knew deep down that it was just ethically wrong. 

I agree with Rick and the groups choice not to give Michonne over to the Governor. If they had, she would've ended up being killed and they would've had to live with that decision knowing that they could have prevented it by keeping her safe. Even though one choice may be a lot easier to do, choosing the ethical option will always benefit you in the long-run. Even though the resources that they had might have been very limited, that also did not stop them from making the right decision about Michonne in not giving her to the Governor. Sometimes, making the easy decision and making the "right" decision are very different and very difficult. Overall, choosing the ethical decision over the easy decision will positively impact you, even if the effects aren't immediate. 


References


Salazar, Heather. “Self-Interest,” The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Series on Ethics and Morality, ed. by Robert  Fastiggi. Gale Cengage Learning, 2013
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