Let us not kid
ourselves into thinking that we have successfully created a GO/NO-GO template
of goodness and that the ready reckoner is all that needs to be disseminated to
the children. The challenge in being good rears its head only when you are
called upon to decide a course of action under fuzzy circumstances. Black and
White scenarios are rare and can be trivially handled. Consider the following
two incidents and see how even under almost identical background situations,
two entirely different decisions emerged.
Binu has been
bitten by a serpent and the poison is spreading fast. The friends around Binu
realize that only Dr Chettan knows the antidote to the poison. Chettan is a
loyal physician in the personal service of an aristocrat called Dattan; Dattan
and Binu have been sworn enemies for decades. Chettan refuses to treat Binu
quoting his loyalty to Dattan. At this point, Binu’s father Moopan reminds Chettan
of Dhanwantri’s doctrine that a doctor’s professional ethic lies in not
refusing to treat any patient irrespective of circumstances. If a life can be
saved, it is the doctor’s duty to help save that life. I hope today’s Hippocratic
oath that doctors take incorporates this principle. Chettan was convinced and
decided to respect the professional code of conduct even at the cost of a servant’s
personal code of loyalty to the master.
Jitesh was
battling for his life with excruciating pain all over his body. He was on
life-support systems. The doctor attending on him was his close friend Mony.
Mony was doing everything at his command to keep Jitesh alive. But Jitesh abused him and said that he did
not want to live a life at the mercy of artificial systems. Mony made a
reference to his professional code of conduct that as a doctor, if a life could
be saved, it should be saved. Jitesh
said that the best way of “saving” him in the current state would be to let him
die. He played upon the bond of friendship of the doctor toward him and
succeeded. The doctor gave precedence to the friendship code of conduct ahead
of professional code. Hence one needs to approach goodness with wisdom and with
the full realization that there are no “perfect” decisions.
.
The following is a summary of an incident from the
book Did the pedestrian die? by Tompennar.
Suppose you were traveling with your friend who was
driving the car at great speed beyond the stipulated limits on a village road.
It was twilight time and the car knocked down a pedestrian. There were no eyewitnesses to the incident.
Does your friend have a right to expect that you will lie about his over-speeding?
Will you lie and save your friend or will you uphold the law of the land? Or will
your behavior depend on whether the pedestrian died as a result of the accident
or survived?
It is YOUR CALL.
Thank you for your
patience.
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