The press is full of agonized stories these days of ethical quandaries being faced by doctors, police — even little people like you and me. A baby is born practically dead, with severe complications and life-threatening defects. An operation can prolong her life for twenty years, but she will suffer relentlessly, be unable ever to move, never communicate with those around her, and die anyway. In a weakling culture like ours, we run to the courts for answers at times like this instead of living up to the moment. (Sometimes the law leaves otherwise brave men little choice, since no one wants to be prosecuted for "mercy killing".) Then the 5 0'clock news announces a moral dilemma is being wrestled with by great legal minds.

Do we really need the Supreme Court to figure out for us whether 2 cents worth of protoplasm has a soul? John Peter Altgeld, who pardoned the Haymarket rioters, said that since judges wear black robes only to convince the gullible of their infallibility, maybe on days when they deliver controversial judgments they ought to wear two layers. (Since he said this in front of a judge he got fined $100 — so I guess the judge was right.)

When I was in college a book by some New England cleric was making a splash by coining the term "situational ethics". He said that the choices we make ought at least partially to be conditioned by the circumstances we're in. Amazing what they uncover in New England.

I'm convinced that all this profound talk about moral dilemmas, when it implies that life is somehow stacked up against us ordinary mortals, is a lot of nonsense. That includes all the hand-wringing about genetic engineering and test-tube babies and the encroachment of computers, too. People who can't stand up to life will run to the courts and clergy for instructions, but they're not the ones I care about since they're leaving the heavy lifting to the rest of us. For those who do roll up their sleeves and face these issues, however, I think the word "dilemma" is misleading.

In moments of great moral stress, it's true that you have to take a moment to find your center and re-acquaint your deepest commitments. Then you go ahead and do what's right; or at least you do your best. In that moment, there's nothing else to be done: you've done it all. If you don't run away from it, the entire moment is over almost as soon as it began. Only a handful of such people ever receive recognition for their heroism, however.

Is that a picture of a dilemma? No, because after you've gone through the moment and mopped the sweat from your brow, you'll soon learn whether you made the right decision or not. At least you'll learn something that will make the next time around less "problematic". The word dilemma implies an eternal mystery whose solution is beyond human grasp. The only eternal in this scenario is the need for human courage, which assuredly will long outlast society's current institutions of cowardice.

I trust the people who are reaching for moral solutions in the moment to do their best. That is in the nature of human beings. Whether they let the baby die or let it live is not the question. (The fact that the baby's life is tragic in either case is not even the question — it's just a fact.) Whether they do the best that they can for that baby is. It's not for the rest of us outside that context to pass judgement like scolding teachers. If we want, we can observe and learn from the actions or even mistakes taken by others, but why impose vague esthetically conditioned moral prejudices in a moment from which we could learn so much?

I don't know what I'd do with a baby so sick. I'd love to know what really goes on in the minds of the people faced with the problem, but actually I don't need to know how I'd act. All I know is that I think I could summon the strength to try and do what I thought was right, and be unprejudiced enough to learn from whatever mistakes I made. And I want to live in such a way as to know that such strength will be there when I need it. To want to live in such a way that you know all the answers before you even get to the questions is to miss the whole point about living an open life.

Moral dilemmas are the fate of people who 1) spend lots of time judging the actions of others who are dealing with realities above and beyond those doing the judging, and 2) people who worry about the future because they've compromised their own present.

So don't accept a social role that has you scoring the morality of those dealing with ethical stresses that are foreign to your own life. Leave tomorrow's stresses for some other day.

There will always be a next day. If not, don't worry about what I've just said.