The Lesser of Two Evils

I was watching an episode of the Law & Order - Special Victims Unit (SVU) series yesterday. Olivia Benson and her team, including the Manhattan District Attorney, were faced with the hard choice of picking an immediate lesser evil. It was like striking a deal with the devil to catch a demon who presented a clear and present danger.

The choice was between a biotech millionaire buying off embryos to preserve the best of their kind and an NGO boss who was taking advantage of the economic status of a section of the society to produce these embryos. The latter was involved in direct murder, but the other was doing the same but not that directly within the provisions under the confines of the law in that jurisdiction.

Olivia Benson was stunned at first, but she had to budge in the end, and they had to find other creative ways under the law to deal with the determined biotech millionaire and racist agenda after they got the NGO boss. But she and the NYPD detective were honest enough to admit that the millionaire would definitely get more embryos; there was no victory there when the judge said the embryo should be destroyed.

As I watched the scenes and dialogues, a part of me just thought about how that was a reflection of the society. From morality to science, religion, politics, money, and every other aspect of our daily lives and choices. We are now faced with more scenarios of choosing the lesser evil based on our moral compass shaped by our frame of reference over time. Frame of reference being direct and indirect influence from religion, culture, our peers, news, laws (written and unwritten), family background, education, and the media. You have to choose on which side you are on because sitting on the fence, you risk being caught in the crossfire, and your silence can be misconstrued and wrongly interpreted by the loudest and more influential side.

Hence, you cannot afford to be silent and unbothered.

As humans, we often want to prove to ourselves and others that "we are good people" because we judge others by their actions and judge ourselves (and those we like) by their intentions. So, we have a society where people are now mastering the act of getting away with doing the worst things and justifying it as the lesser evil because "what choice do I have?".

It is always more complicated than we often realize until we are faced with saving our asses and someone has to take the fall or someone has to be thrown under the bus. Hence, when people talk of equality and justice, you know there is a lot of nuance in the intersectional spaces where it is neither here nor there because whatever choices and trade-offs are being made, someone somewhere will be at the losing end.

Somehow, someone will suffer. This is a painful truth we shy away from, but that's how decisions made miles away by a select few on one side of the world impact millions on the other side. The trade-offs often translate to someone gaining and the other losing, bringing game theory into life's equation: hierarchies, preferences, and discrimination.