Archive for August 15th, 2009

The world over, people realize that we have the right to defend ourselves in self-defense but the defense of others has always been a murky concept. I mean what is our obligation to our fellow man or woman? One person can only do so much and even in the prosperous USA, homeless and mentally ill people abound in cities and tourist areas. Does an individual have an obligation to one person in need or is that societies problem at large?

As you can see before I really start getting into this topic there are a lot of grey areas. One person only has so much financial resources. A person has to provide for himself, his family, maybe his church, maybe his charities and then save for his retirement. The street bum or hobo’s as we called them in my youth are not our collective problem! Right? I mean they choose to live that lifestyle (one can argue this point either way)?

In this post I will attempt to clarify ones obligation to his fellow man or woman by telling a story that has haunted me ever since I learned about this ethical dilemma in my Organizational Management class for my MBA degree. Some mountain climbers found a monk on the high trail while ascending Mt. Everest. The Monk was near death and in the story it was not mentioned why the monk took the high trail instead of the normally traveled low trail. But before I get into that ethical dilemma, I found a funny short video about ethical dilemmas.

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