How wrong does it have to be before you won’t do it?

OK! FINE! I have been so close to finishing this article forever! I have written and rewritten it several times. It’s still not what I wanted but I a moving on. The idea was to experiment with taking a large complex topic like “Morality” and split it up into manageable bite-size chunks. Each time I tried to fix it or re-write it a morphing would occur. It would take on new unintended directions or growths. “It’s not a tumor.” Anyway …

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The big question is do we live in a world where all our actions break down in to Right vs. Wrong? Or are there gray areas?

How wrong is it to buy a big screen TV for the big game then return it to the store for your money back on Monday? It is slimy I feel but people do it. Some people “buy” a dress to wear to the big occasion just to return it later. Even if there is a restocking fee I feel it is slimy and therefore wrong.

If you saw a dollar on the ground would you pick it up and keep it? Of course you would. Most would look around to see if maybe it belonged to anyone and if it didn't they would keep it. Would you do the same with a $20? Or a $100? What about $5,000? At some point we all have a line we wouldn't cross. We would do the right thing and report the find to the police.

Unfortunately, I think people use what is and what is not legal as a guide. That if it is not illegal and it doesn’t hurt anyone and it gives me any advantage I will do it. I am not saying that every advantage you take / corner you cut is slimy. Often it’s called frugal or just plain common sense.

Every school day, like most of my neighbors, I drive my kids to our near-by school. I live in a sub-division of over 600 homes. Each morning my sons and I sit in a long line of cars full of parents and kids waiting to turn left. We are trying to leave our sub-division all in the same 15 minute window. About half way up the line of cars the road begins to widen and for the last 400 feet there are two lanes. The new lane is for people to turn right or to cross and go straight into the condos across the street.

A small percentage of people will by-pass the line of people waiting to turn left. They drive across and into the condos, turn around as soon as they can, and then turn right out of there. This is not that easy either because they can’t leave the long line until about half way through so they really only get to skip half of it. Some of them will even drive up on the curb to get into the emerging right lane sooner.

By my estimate this only buys them about 30 seconds. Believe it or not a 30 second savings to jump the line made up of your neighbors?!

Awhile back there was a news article about a gas station where the pumps were malfunctioning and giving away gas much cheaper than what was posted on the sign out on the street.

I asked my friends on IRC if this was stealing. I honestly think it’s a fine line there. So I thought the discussion would be about whether or not this is stealing. To my surprise most didn’t even think it would be wrong let alone stealing. I became the advocate for “Come on, maybe this is not stealing, but clearly this is wrong?” I admitted though that I would probably have taken the gas too.

How wrong does it have to be before you won’t do it? We all have to draw our lines that we can live with. The problem I have is it seems a lot of people use what is legal to decide where they should draw the line. To me if it is illegal it ONLY means that as a society we have agreed it was a wrong thing to do. That should only be the base-line because as a society we don’t agree on a whole lot.