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Question of the Week:

Would you kill a thousand men to end headaches forever?

My answer:

My answer, no matter how many ways I approach the question, is “No.”  In fact, I would not kill one man to end headaches forever.  Even being liberal with the wording and assuming that I would not personally be performing the execution and also assuming that I could choose the most evil of men to die for this cause, my answer remain the same.

I simply do not feel that I have any claim on another man’s life.  Though I no longer consider myself an Objectivist, I still live by John Galt’s code: “I swear by life, and my love for it, that I will not live my life for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine.”  Nor would I ask another man to die for mine.  Even were a man willing to be a martyr for the cause of headache-less existence, I could not claim his life for the cause, and I certainly would not be the one to assume the martyrdom.

Looking at this from a more personal, and less ethical, view, I cannot be swayed.  Being someone who has suffered from headaches nearly every day of my life, I will be the first to attest that the loss of this pain does not equal in any way even one man’s life, much less one thousand.  In fact, I would be eager to double my headache pain to save one man’s life.

Delving even further into the question, it is important, I think, to note that a “headache” has a specific cause and set of symptoms.  Much of what we commonly call “headache” is actually not.  For example, migraine “headaches”, are not headaches; they are caused by an entirely different set of circumstances.  With that in mind, I am even more adamant in my stance that the loss of one thousand lives, or even one life, is not worth the relief of such a petty problem.

Now, allow me to expand the criteria of what a “headache” is for the purpose of answering this question: I will suggest that it means something more like “all head pain” when you take into account “headaches” caused by migraine and other illnesses and head trauma.  This is dangerous ground.  Our bodies’ pain system is a very important tool in letting us know when something is wrong: getting a sleep-deprivation headache is a good way to force someone to get into bed before they cause themselves too many health problems.  So maybe the question is intended to imply that the deaths will eliminate the sources of all headaches or head pains: no one will hurt their head or become so stressed out that they would get a headache.  The implications of interpreting the question this way are so preposterous that I won’t grant them any further treatment.

All of this is not to say that I believe the elimination of headaches is a bad cause; if a thousand men wish to devote their lives to the study of ending all headaches, they have my admiration and gratitude, but it is not up to me to force them or even ask them to do so.

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