Moral Paradoxes in Source Code

After watching the movie Source Code, I was left pondering whether Commander Goodwin was justified in her decision to terminate Captain Colter Stevens following his successful mission to save millions in the city of Chicago. Based on contextual clues in the film, Captain Stevens appears to have been a decorated war hero who died in combat and was posthumously award for his actions. We don’t learn until later (along with Stevens) that part of his brain has been kept alive for the purpose of using him in simulated missions involving source code.  After Captain Stevens successfully saves thousands of lives in his mission, the director of the program muses that millions more lives could be saved with the addition of other soldiers that meet the specifications for the program. However, after witnessing the effect of the mission on Captain Colter, it made me realize that the value of an individual life was being overlooked.

In my opinion, one of the most interesting parts of this film was the relationship that Commander Goodwin and Captain Stevens develop through their mere minutes of communication between the repeated simulated missions. Goodwin, who starts outs as the robotic voice of the government, eventually gives in and reveals information to Stevens as he becomes more and more distraught. In doing this, Goodwin begins to view Stevens as a man, and not merely as a tool at the dispense of the government. Stevens, who learns that he is being kept alive through a life support pod, asks to be terminated upon the completion of his mission, due to the pain that he goes through as he realizes the pain he has left behind for his father. One of the most iconic quotes of the movie comes when Goodwin tries to convince Stevens that he is being given a second chance at serving his country, unlike other soldiers who have died in combat. Stevens replies, “I think that most soldiers would agree that dying for your country once is enough.”
In the final minutes of the movie, Goodwin is forced to decide between honoring her agreement with Stevens, and keeping him alive to use in other missions. In my opinion, Goodwin made the right agreement to terminate his life for a few reasons. For one, she had already made a promise to Stevens in the final moments of his life. To Stevens, this was in fact his dying wish. In addition, Goodwin recognized that the heart and soul of a single man was worth no less than the hearts and souls of a million more people like him. Even though by keeping Stevens alive more lives could have been saved, by not honoring her agreement, Goodwin would have essentially been saying that his life was not worth enough to give him the right to free will. By denying a single man the free will to decide how his life would be used, it could open a whole floodgate of decisions that could lead to the government adding tens and maybe hundreds more soldiers just like Colter into the program. In my opinion, the way to change is made with a single right decision, and more will stem from that first moral choice. The only thing that I struggle with in this moral paradox is the idea that this government and this whole country were built upon the idea of a greater good for the majority of American citizens, and by choosing to make all decisions based upon on the effect on the individual could have disastrous effects. The real question is, where do we draw the line between individual worth and rights, and the majority of all people?