A soldier named Sachs is ordered to do something terrible — to rape and then kill a prisoner. But as far as he knows, this prisoner is nothing more than an innocent civilian, arrested only because of an unacceptable ethnic background. If he follows the order, he will be tormented by his conscience, because this is an unjust war crime; if he refuses, he himself will be executed. What should he do?

Chinese people often say that someone is like grass on a wall, swaying with the wind. In truth, this is simply instinct — like a plant’s tendency to lean toward sunlight, nothing more than a reaction seeking advantage and avoiding harm. You have it, I have it, everyone has it. Under the pressure of certain high-stakes relationships, some people bow their heads, obey orders, and trim their sails to the wind, while others do exactly the opposite — they’re brave, upright, daring to challenge injustice. It’s this latter kind of person who tends to appear in the eyes of our nation’s future generations, because this is the “morality” we promote.

But if you were in Sachs’s position, what would you do? Should he violate his conscience and carry out the order, or would he rather die defending the bottom line of morality, sacrificing himself — or is there some other reasonable course of action? Clearly, there’s no real “good solution” to this problem, which means there’s no such thing as a truly “good person” in this scenario either. So where, then, does the force that produces and drives morality actually come from? (Question drawn from The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten)