Michael Schur

So ...

Why did this embarrassing, miserable mistake that I made make me want to continue to study moral philosophy?

If I told you that you were going to be in jeopardy

How would you prepare?

You would read some trivia books and flip through a world atlas.

If I told you that you were going to take a half-court shot at an NBA game for the chance to win $50,000, how would you prepare?

You would get a basketball, you would go to the YMCA and you would practice hucking up half-court shots.

Well, you're probably never going to be on Jeopardy.

You are probably never going to take a half-court shot at an NBA game for a chance to win $50,000, but you will, I guarantee it, at some point become embroiled in a complicated, confusing, ugly, gut-wrenching moral dilemma.

That is just a fact of life on Earth.

There will be a dilemma in which there is no clear rule to follow.

There is only a kind of vague investigation, and everything you do seems like it might be wrong.

So how do you prepare for that?

By reading theories of ethics and understanding what they say,

what they mean, how they purport to help us make better decisions and become better people.

And by the way, just reading these theories is no guarantee that you will actually make the right choice when you're inside one of these complicated and tangled ethical dilemmas.

You can take all the practice half-court shots you want at the YMCA, but when you set foot on the floor of the NBA arena and there are 15,000 screaming fans, you're probably still going to throw up an air ball, right?

But if you've prepared, you will increase your odds of success.

You will increase the chances that you sink the shot or that you at least get the ball close enough to the rim that you don't embarrass yourself and become a meme.

Understanding ethical theories is how we increase our chances of success at simply being human beings who have to negotiate with other human beings.