You Are Living in a Colonial Outpost on the Edge

Essay

You are living in a colonial outpost on the edge of the wilderness with winter fast approaching. Your society has had limited but friendly connection with the natives on the other side of the fortress wall, and you know they hold the deer to be a sacred animal, the killing of which demands he ritual sacrifice of a member of their own society. Your food supplies are running perilously low. Killing a deer would mean the certain death of someone on the other side of the wall, not killing a dear will likely mean starvation. Formulate a relativist argument for killing the deer and an absolutist argument for starving.