Live Q&As

Your willingness to see multiple contributing sources leading to the woman's death is important.  There doesn't have to be a single problem or "bad guy" on which to lay the whole thing off -- though that temptation is very real for lots of people.  In fact, I wish it were that simple.

You are right to wonderf about the role of Ms. Saldanha's overall mental health given that this was a suicide.  On the other hand, she would not have been the first otherwise clinically healthy person to react so strongly to a single event, that suicide suddeny seemed like a reasnable response.  I actually think that is less about a specific mental health issue than it is about feeling so isolated and vulnerable, which she may have been, that taking her own life made sense to her. 

Until you got to your comments about the DJ's, I was right there with you, and then you lost me.  You make a morally dangerous leap from appreciating that things are interconnected, to assuming that because they are, no ethical or moral responsibility can be assigned.  that is just wrong.

The real ethical challenge comes from acknowledging the interconnectedness which you wisely point out, AND the ability to take and assign responsibility in light of it, not simply walk away from any notion of accountability.  As tempting as the either/or appraoch may be, it is hardly the way to go, leading either to one-sided blame as others like to find, or to the utter absence of any notion of shared accountablity for events in our lives and in our world, as you suggest.

Blame is a funny concept, indeed, and I appreciate your desire to limit it to legal culpability.  Not sure that it needs to be so, but it doesn't matter, as your definition gets you to the important issue of moral responsibility. 

You are correct that I place that responsibility in more than one location, and that its "shareability" does not mean that it is less real because it is more diffuse.  In fact, pretty much everyone from the radio audience, to the nurse herself, played a role here, and as is often the case, it is best for people to see with whom they most identify and then look for blame there -- not everywhere else, as we so often do.

I assume you really want to know why, not how, I can pose this question.  The how has to do with brain cells, fingers typing, an internet publishiung platform, etc.  The why is simple:  because "blame" captures many issues for many people, and then in their wisdom, they can do as you have done -- begin tp o open up the category and ask important questions.

Having said all that, and not having the information you think is important, you seem ready to place your own version of blame on the DJ's who played the prank.  At least that is where you want to draw your moral lesson from.  You can call that what yu like, but would your answer be effected if you had the information about which you aked?

My point is that we all make of these stories what we choose, seeing different elements and challenges as being the most important. 

I am not asking you to blame anyone or anything.  I am asking if you have an opinion and how you arrived at it.  I am asking us to think about our understanding of blame, guilt and responsibility, and the extent to which those thangs can be shared, rather than always isolating a single bad person or thing, which, if we could just get rid of it, all of our problems would vanish.  That is the ethic of fairy tales, and while it is a piece of who we are as humans, it is a piece which we should grow beyond as mature ethical beings.

I know, it's not as much fun as insulting me or accusing me of doing something unethical, but he, give it a shot!

I love your answer because it demonstrates how much some of us seek to avoid the use of blame and guilt, even as we use those very concepts.  I am NOT mocking your response, though I am troubled by your defense of people who were "just doing their jobs".  Surely, based on what you wrote, that is not the ethical standard by which you live, s give the the DJ's that pass? 

And as you wrote, there is a wrong path, so you too believe in guilt and blame, you simply don't want to assign any in this case.  You may be correct, but not fundamentally different from me or anyone else in this forum.

There is no doubt that the DJ's are being used by some as the boogey men -- the evil which, if we could localize it and destroy it, all would be well again in the world.  Or at least this stry would have a moral ending.  You are correct about the insificiency of that response.  That said, they are hardly without guilt here.  the fact that they did not, or probaly could not, forsee the results of their actions, does not give them a free pass.

And I agree that taking her own life suggests that more was at work here than having been tricked and then embarassed as a result.  I would also point out that nobody wants to raise the issue of Saldanha's own moral guilt for having violated a patient's privacy.  While she thought that she was sharing the information with family, she had an obligation to verify that before sharing the information over the phone. 

Thanks for your kind words and for having stated s well what I at least try to do, what we try to do, each week.  I hope that as you read on today, you will find us successful!

We agree about the role of thinking beyond the moment, especially when it comes to being ethical and moral.  What we do, and who it effects, are both usually more complicated than we often realize, and being mindful of that degree of interconnection is hugely valuable.

On the other hand, the notion of interconnectedness can be paralyzing also, and that is no good.  If we stopped all of the time, to imagine all of the potentail outcomes of each of our actions, we would accmplish nothing!  Hence the term, paralysis by analysis.

It can be tough to balance the impulse to act and the impulse to analyze, but if you appreciate that most of life requires at least some of each, you are more likely to get it right.

And thank YOU for introducing the importance of the relative familiarity and closeness between the one pulling the "prank" and the one being "pranked", not to mention how public the whole thing is.  You are so right.

What is funny between friend who will love and protect each other no matter what, can be humiliating and even deadly, when done to strangers and shared for entertainment purposes.  Of course, that is one of the reasons that such things are entertaining to the strangers.  They know that they are participating in the violation of an intimacy, and like all voyueristic moments, it either meets a need which the voyeur can not otherwise fullfil, or creates a sense of resolution and/or justice which they otherwise lack.

That is the part of all this in which we all play a role.  My hope is that in being aware of it, we can learn to do better, and also make sure that we know, as you wrote here and I did earlier, that the loss of a life is the real story here.  The rest is commentary.