The Ethical Golden Rule of Zombieland

In the movie Zombieland (2009), two sisters, Little Rock and Wichita, are left weaponless in a zombie-infested grocery store. When unlikely companions Tallahassee and Columbus enter the store armed, they come up with a trick to steal their weapons. Little Rock pretends that she has been bitten
and the only logical excuse in their eyes is to use Tallahassee's gun to shoot her before she turns into a zombie (which is an ethical dilemma in itself!). Wichita (very emotionally) asks to be the one to shoot her little sister, and Tallahassee hands her the gun. Instead of shooting her sister, however, they turn on both of them and rob them of all their weapons. Very VERY luckily, Tallahassee and Columbus stumble upon a tote full of fully loaded weapons and continue their journey unscathed.

Little Rock (left) and Wichita (right) taking the weapons

        
            If this was not a movie, I'm not so convinced that Tallahassee and Columbus would have seen the same luck. Essentially, Little Rock and Wichita "screwed" the two men just for their own benefit. Their actions were a perfect example of philosophical egoism, which states that "it is rational to perform actios to one's advantage and irrational to refrain (Salazar, 1392)." However, Plato argues that just because the power to do wrong things is available to you, you should not give in to the temptation. Although the sisters came up with a perfect plan to take the weapons from them, they could have just as easily come up with a different plan that did not leave the men to fend for themselves weaponless against a world full of zombies.

Columbus (left) Zombie (right)

            Similarly, Immanuel Kant believes that people should treat others as "equally worthy (Salazar, 1392)." People should act in the benefit of not only themselves but the good of others. He argued that people should not be motivated by self-interest but by the inner "duty" to do the right thing for everyone. Little Rock and Wichita's actions in no way displayed any thoughts to the effects on Tallahassee and Columbus when they were left without any weapons. The Utilitarianism supporters would also cringe at the girl's actions. In their eyes, the girls should have come up with a plan that would benefit all four of them, instead of fully benefiting them and leaving the others without any protection. Salazar states this perfectly in her essay Self-Interest:
           
               "With billions of beings competing for resources, the benefit of the whole
                 requires self sacrifice, especially for those able to substantially impact the
                 benefits of others (1393)."

Utilitarianists would encourage them to think about humanity as a whole and how it would be effected by their choice. In this case, the zombie-to-human ratio greatly favors the zombies. In fact, other than the 4 main characters, only one other human is featured in the movie. If the girl's motivation was logically the survival of themselves, it should also be the survival of the human race itself. Adding two more bodies to the list they have to kill in order to end this apocalypse doesn't seem very logical either.

         As philosopher's continues to study these theories of self interest, they discover that working as a group makes success much more likely. In Zombieland (2009), the sisters are able to successfully steal the weapons because they worked together, it is comfortably assumed that if either of them had to work alone they would not have been able to pull it off. With that, if they had come up with a plan to work together with Tallahassee and Columbus, they may have been able to protect themselves together and reach the place they were trying to go. Later in the movie Little Rock, Wichita, Tallahassee and Columbus join forces and are much more successful as a group.

         Although the odds of dealing with a zombie apocalypse outside of a movie is fairly low, these actions can easily be transferred to real life situations. In any action, according to Kant, Plato, and Utilitarians, consider the consequences it brings to others and to humanity itself. Leaving people with nothing for only your own benefit will not bring true success to anyone. It should not be your motivation to only protect yourself. Not caring about the consequences of anyone in your path is not beneficial at all, even to yourself. The movie Zombieland (2009) is full of comical and quirky tips that Columbus creates through his journey that apparently are the key to surviving the zombie apocalypse (as shown to the left), but one that it teaches without specifying is to treat others like they are equals, because any life should be just as important as your own.


References

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