Rabbit Hole Society

What makes an action right or wrong? And what happens when our moral instincts disagree with our reasoning?

For this Side Quest, we'll step into Michael Sandel's Justice and explore the moral dilemmas behind some deceptively simple questions about life, death, sacrifice and responsibility.

We'll watch selected fragments, pause, question, argue and follow the ideas wherever they take us.

No preparation. No philosophy degree. No right answers.

Just a few difficult questions, some curious minds, and a couple of hours to see how far down the rabbit hole we can go. 🐇

Sometimes people want to play God.
Sometimes circumstances make them play God...

... to decide who lives
... who gets the chance
... who pays the price
... who gets protected
... and who doesn't.

A dilemma. No names, no clues. Just a choice for you to make.

What would you do?

Once the decision is made, will the curtain be pulled back: the people, the place, the circumstances, and what actually happened.

Would you still make the same choice?

Sometimes the dilemma isn't choosing between right and wrong.

It's deciding what you're willing to live with.

What if the person who pulls the trigger isn't quite where the story begins?

We usually explain behaviour by pointing to the moment it happens: He chose it. She did it. They decided.

But what if we keep asking why?

What was happening in the brain seconds before? What happened earlier that day? What shaped the person who made the decision?

For our first Rabbit's Reading Hall, we're opening Robert Sapolsky's Behave — a book that travels from neuroscience and hormones to childhood, culture and evolution in search of an answer.

This is the first of ten meetings through the book, and we'll follow the rabbit hole one section at a time.