feelings to attachment to humans make ethics fuzzy

[emef]

yesterday I was re-reading The Secret History. [spoilers forthcoming] There's this bit near the end about students wondering how their favourite professor would react to knowing they'd murdered someone, and all of a sudden I had this image of my violin students and I was wondering, how I would react if my students told me that they'd done something horrific? Would I go to the police? I was slightly surprised to find that my reaction was a feeble, I would need to think about it.

Comments

[tei]

Damn. Maybe this is just because too much Hannibal this week has severely distorted my moral compass, but I thought about what I would do if one of my gymnastics kids told me they had murdered someone, and my immediate gut reaction was, what do they need? How can I protect them?

[emef]

Right??? Caring about and feeling invested in someone's well-being does WILD things to personal ethics.