The world seems to be ending in What Happened to Monday causing governments to take drastic measures. One of the laws passed becomes the One-Child policy requiring families to only have one child. Unfortunately for many families including the Settman family, more babies are being born than ever before. Terrence Settman becomes a grandfather as his daughter gives birth to seven daughters, each of them named a day of the week. To hide from the government, Terrence develops a system where each granddaughter only goes outside once a week with the day corresponding to each of their names. So what are they hiding from? Let’s analyze the situations where the sisters hacked into the C.A.B headquarters and use ethical theories to conclude whether their actions were morally correct or not.
The Child Allocation Bureau (C.A.B), led by Nicolette Cayman, is responsible for upholding the One-Child policy and “freezing” any siblings using CryoSleep in hopes of them “waking up to a better world.” The C.A.B violates their citizen’s privacy each day by requiring them to identify themselves at checkpoints to allow them to buy food, enter the workplace, access bank accounts, etc. Moreover, these bracelets track each citizen daily allowing C.A.B to keep an eye out for any One-Child policy breakers. Because of these restrictive laws, the Settman family is compelled to hack into the C.A.B’s system to protect themselves.
At the beginning of the movie, Terrence hacks the bracelet which he receives from the government for one child. He can duplicate the bracelet for the six other granddaughters so that whenever they are scanned at the government-issued checkpoints, the profile which shows up is always the same - Karen Settman. Later on in the movie, Saturday decides to become intimate with Adrian, Monday’s boyfriend, who works for the C.A.B. She only does this to get closer to Adrian so she can link her bracelet to his to hack into the C.A.B. and view the feed from the cameras inside their headquarters. Through this feed, the sisters discover Monday in a holding cell. The technique which Saturday uses to manipulate Adrian is called social engineering. As our book states, “Social engineering refers to the manipulation of a person inside the organization to gain access to confidential information” [1]. At the climax of the movie, one of the sisters hacks into the C.A.B. headquarters with the help of Adrian to broadcast the video of a sibling being incinerated instead of frozen, exposing Cayman’s fraudulent behavior.
In each of these situations, the Settman family disobeys the laws by hacking the C.A.B. headquarters to protect themselves that is technically selfish. Like the audience, they are unaware that Cayman has been killing siblings instead of using the CryoSleep she had promised, so they were breaking the law to protect themselves and no one else. Thinking about these situations from a Kantian perspective, it is not morally correct to hack the C.A.B. system to stay alive because if everyone else did this, then there wouldn’t be enough food for everyone, and the Earth’s demise would become rapid [1]. The second formulation produced by Kant also states that you should not use others as a means to an end. Saturday violates this when she uses Adrian to get closer to his bracelet to hack the C.A.B’s video feed proving that her actions were morally wrong. If we use Rule Utilitarianism, all cases of hacking the headquarters are morally wrong since rules, which are enforced to keep the human race from dying out, are being broken for selfish reasons [1]. Conversely, when we use the Act Utilitarian analysis on the situation where Adrian and one of the sisters hacked into the C.A.B. server room to expose Cayman, their actions seem to be morally right. Exposing Cayman leads to revealing the truth about the One-Child policy, saving the lives of siblings [1]. The sister's actions had more benefits than detriments meaning they were morally correct. Furthermore, the Social Contract theory is broken by Nicolette Cayman since she proposed the One-Child Policy with the deal that any siblings would be put to sleep in CryoSleep in hopes that they would be unfrozen when the situation gets better. The government leaders agreed to this policy since children were not being harmed, but Cayman proved to be a liar.
In the end, Cayman and her followers are rightfully removed from positions of power since they break many ethical theories that would not have been possible without the Settman family and their strong will.
References:
[1] Quinn, Michael J. Ethics for the Information Age. Pearson, 2020.
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