Prompted by neuro-trash grrrl’s reply to Would you sell yourself. . ., I’ve become curious to know what the limits are for the depths to which we dopers would sink for the sake of a lousy buck.
Let’s assume infinite funds - enough money to leave behind all that you have ever known and begin that life of which you’ve always dreamed. What would you not be willing to do? Would you draw the line at killing a loved one? Torturing a baby seal? Mutilating your own genitals? Having sex with Bob Dole? Going out of your way to talk to that weird guy in the shipping department?
I ask because, when I do get around to hiring that army of ruthless evildoers, I’ll need to know everyone’s moral and ethical boundaries.
As a bonus question, how much money would I have to guaranty would be paid to your favorite loved one or cause in order for you to off yourself? In other words, if I guaranteed that I would grant $100,000,000,000 (US) to cancer research on the condition that you kill yourself quickly and painlessly, would you do it?
Killing, nope. Torture, nope. Bob Dole, uh…I’ll get back to you on that one.
I suppose I would be willing to kill an animal in a reasonably humane way. Refusing to do this on principal would be hypocritical, since I am not really a vegetarian.
As for the bonus question, well, being in research myself, I can say that throwing a lot of money at it is not necessarily going to produce answers, so I’ll stay alive thanks. Ditto for charities. I also like to think that my loved ones would not get much pleasure out of the money at that price.
However, I would surrender myself gratis to save the life of my child or my spouse.
Oh, c’mon! There’ve got to be some ruthless, money grubbing dopers. Remember, we’re talkin’ about enough dough to buy an island and enough memory erasing heroin to last a life time.
In my college sociology class we had to fill out a questionnaire which had a list of unpleasant things and the amount of money it would take for us to do them. Things like desecrate a church, lose a limb or an eye, insult someone to their face, be insulted, etc. One that stands out was going to sleep for the entire month of February every year, and a later question about August.
We did have the option of answering that no amount of money would suffice. I don’t recall all of my responses but I remember being willing to accept a minor physical handicap in exchange for what I thought was enough money to last me the rest of my life. The hard ones for me were the emotional ones: hurting someone else or being publicly humiliated.
We thought it was a, well, mundane and pointless exercise, but the professor pointed out that there are real-life situations where someone has to attach a monetary amount to and emotional or physical situation: juries in civil suits, for example, or insurance companies.
Curiously, there are things you couldn’t pay me to do that I do all the time. For instance, I value honesty as a principle and I would tell you that you couldn’t pay me enough money to tell a deliberate lie. But have I ever told a lie? Sure. Will I ever tell another. No! (Oops, there I go!)
