Source Code

           The movie Source Code was very interesting to me and throughout the movie there were many tough decisions that needed to be made. With every decision that was made I instantly thought about which classic category was being used and what decision I would have made if I were in the movie.

            The biggest decision that had to be made in the whole movie was for Commander Goodwin to disobey her boss Dr. Rutledge and keep Captain Stevens alive so he can save more lives or keep her promise and terminate Captain Steven’s life after his last mission.

            Dr. Rutledge believed that if they kept Captain Stevens alive then he could go on more missions and save thousands if not millions of more lives. This decision-making by him would be considered Utilitarianism decision-making, which is a sub category of consequential ethics. Utilitarianism  “argues that an act is morally right if the total good of an action is more favorable than unfavorable to everyone involved”. I believe Dr. Rutledge was in the right with this decision-making, because thousands of lives are far more important than one life. At the same time I do not feel like there is a right or wrong way of making this type of decision, because Commander Goodwin made a promise to Captain Stevens and knew that he was going through a lot of pain during each eight-minute mission and felt like it was her duty to fulfill Captain Stevens last request made and that was to terminate his life after his last mission.     

            Making someone else suffer to save more lives is the decision that I would make, but other people have different thoughts about this type of decision and I do not think they are wrong for their decisions because we are all different. This thought process is easy for me to say, because I am not the one suffering, but I feel like I would be strong enough to be able to know that I am making a sacrifice to save many more lives.

            Overall the decision in the movie to either terminate Captain Steven’s life or to keep him alive and have the potential of saving millions more was very difficult for Commander Goodwin as is should be. Making a decision that involves someone living or not must be very hard to do, however I feel like the lives of thousands of people are far more important than a single persons life, no matter who they are or what they have done in their lives. At the same time I do believe that it is not my decision to choose whether or not someone should live, and that choice should be up to themselves and no one else because, no one knows what they are going through except for the person themselves.