The morals of passivity

Question

Listening to Justice with Michael Sandel, he talks about the trolley problem. In the first case he talks about the classic problem where you are on a tram, and you can steer it towards either a group of five people, or one single person.
The other case is "the fat man" case, where you have the option of either seeing five people being killed by the tram, or pushing a fat man over the bridge, killing him but stopping the tram and saving the other five.

On the question on why people choose killing the one person in the first case, but in the second one they would rather see five people be killed, Professor Sandel answers that "we do not want to get out hands dirty".

My question is; why is it passivity is considered a moral better choice? Yes, you did not kill that person, and do not have blood on your hands, but you had the choice to save five people. Are not their blood on your hands as well?

Ps: I am a beginner at this, so please be understanding in that I might not be asking the most precise questions.

Answer 1

It is not universally preferable. Some thinkers, often following Nietzsche, encourage having as much influence as you are able to tolerate.

(The more evolved in this crowd soften that to 'as you and the system are able to tolerate honorably'. Neitzche wrote boldly about the 'value of crime' and the 'power of the lie', but that is not how he lived. In reality, he considered crime 'in poor taste' and lying a waste of everyone's time. We all realize that social norms have value.)

He/they would blame the preference for passivity on our culture's choice of 'slave morality', influenced by Christianity and similar threads in other religions, and by the complexity of our modern cultures. We exonerate innocent victims of circumstance, instead of taking the older path of demanding choice as a matter of honor, because 1) we are culturally invested in the 'magic' of the paradox of strength through weakness and 2) we are also used to being in situations where we lack a significant part of the necessary information.

So we can see ourselves as innocent bystanders, forced unwillingly into the situation we are not ready for, and as wise agents avoiding acting on a potential misunderstanding. That gives us a defensible ethical position. But in the end, if we go down that path too consistently, we are drawn into the position of lionizing victimhood, which is ultimately bad for everyone, since victimhood is not a productive value, and actively produces weaknesses and attendant social costs that need not exist.

That set of folks would kill the fat man if this were a split-second decision. But from an even more powerful position, they would try to convince the fat man to do himself in.

Respecting autonomy is always a more powerful position, because, you have deployed not only 'power over' the situation, but 'power with' those with more direct power (to borrow terms from Starhawk). In this case, if you get your way, you have made the decision about the outcome, but have also influenced the fat man himself directly toward heroism.

If you don't get your way, you have taken the position with the higher potential return-on-investment, though also with the greater risk. The more audacious proposal is better because taking responsibility and facing risk has a positive value, which partially offsets the potential greater likelihood of success in a more calculated approach.

Answer 2

I think a simple gist might be that you are not responsible for the concatenation of circumstances which led to the trolley dilemma.

Even though people may come to harm owing to your inaction, this is also "equally" owing to the inaction of any other observer... Whereas you will be directly responsible for any harm you cause through your actions.

Passively permitting people to die through inaction is certainly callous, and may in fact amount to criminal negligence. But actively causing death is plainly murderous, regardless of good intentions or consequences.