That The Shadows Kept Me Hidden, From The Light That Calls My Name, All The Creatures Stood Above Me, Now I'm Crawling Towards The Sun

--"Crawling Towards The Sun", The Hush Sound

The other day at work I came across a unique situation that I didn't believe was a huge deal, but other people apparently have come to believe is another portent for the downfall of my ethical nature. I was otherwise employed in the men's restroom when I spied sitting on the toilet paper dispenser a container of chewing tobacco. Normally, in a situation like this it's in my interest to gather up whatever has been left behind and ascertain whether it has any use for me. In that regard, I took it back to my desk and showed it to my co-workers. None of them thought it was a huge deal, but my supervisor thought it a huge breach of etiquette and I was instructed to return the container from whence it came. We then proceeded to get into a huge debate about what the "right" thing is to do in a situation such as that. My rationale is that when people misplace things in a public place, such as as a restroom, they have a reasonable expectation to never see the items in question again. My boss's rationale is that in a situation where the item clearly does not belong to me I have a responsibility to turn the item into a lost and found.

Moreover, I reaffirmed my theory that I, as an individual, base my morality on the simple theory of cause and effect. Being a deist, I don't have any grand ledger of my good and bad deeds that will determine whether I go to some grand and beautiful afterlife. There is no afterlife. Free from this constant sense of "being good for goodness" sake, I truly believe most of my actions on whether or not doing something will leave me in a better or worse position than not doing. Included in this calculation is whether or not, if I were to be caught doing something, if I would be punished for it. Take for instance, the chewing tobacco, I took it with me because, though I had no immediate use for it, it would leave me in a position of acquiring something I did not have before. Also, the "punishment" for taking it would have been minimal as I had the excuse that I did not know who it belonged to as well as the rationale it wasn't that important to me anyway. If somebody had asked for it back, it would have been no big deal to hand it back. Now, if the same situation meant that I would have been fired or sent to the police, then I wouldn't have done it. Most ethical situations break down for me into a simple assessment of risk vs. reward.

After work I continued this discussion with Breanne, who is probably the polar opposite of me when it comes to ethical dilemmas. She is the only person I know who will honestly put herself in a worse off position in order to do the morally right thing.


so we tell some lies
and then we hide from light


Here's how the discussion went. Since there are so many hypothetical situations for which ethics is hard to define, we made up a totally ludicrous situation upon which to test our divergent perspectives. We decided that the situation was that making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was wrong because it was discovered that peanut butter and jelly, once combined, were proved to be sentient. In a sense, the making of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was akin to having a baby expressly to abort it--a heinous crime we deemed worthy of capital punishment.

Her reason is simple. Something is wrong because it's wrong. It makes you feel guilty. If something in the way she was raised or taught gave her the belief that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was innately sinful, then she wouldn't do it. Even if there were no physical consequence for it and she was free to have as many sandwiches as she wanted, she would deny herself in accordance to her inner guidelines.

My reason for not making the sandwiches would strictly be not to get killed. Yes, there would be some underlying guilt for killing something alive, but truly the only rationale I have against killing is that I don't want to die myself. Also, I would be opposed to killing someone I knew because that would mean losing somebody who potentially fulfills and enriches my life, but if it were some PB & J creature I did not personally have a relationship with and I was really craving a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then I would have no reservations against making myself a sandwich. In short, in a world devoid of consequences I really have no moral compass to tell me right from wrong. Basically, something is only wrong to me if I can get hurt or punished if I do it.

I guess I never had that Jiminy Cricket to guide me between right and wrong because, after that day, I've discovered a lot of things I do not do, not because I think they're innately wrong or right, but because society says they're against the law and therefore we should not do them. I don't want to be punished by society and that's why I don't do them. Yet there's a lot of things, personally, I would never do and society is okay with them, which leads me to the belief that the corrolary is also true. The only reason I do things sometimes is because they aren't punishable by law and not because I think they're okay to do. For instance, if suddenly arson were to be an excusable crime, I think there's a part of me that would be burning things left and right even though, as it stands now, I think it's wasteful to burn property that somebody could possibly could come into my possession down the line. Yet if society says it's okay then I would cease thinking of it as being "wrong".

I basically go with the flow, and keep my ideas of right and wrong to myself... except in cases where I don't think the law, society, or other people in general can harm me in response to my actions.

It sounds harsh, but that's how I honestly feel where my allegiances to morality and ethics lie.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers