mythteller | Entries tagged with ethics

So? It's been a week? Have you been good and have you been good to others? Leave your stories in the Comments.

My week was spent holding doors open (as inspired by t!), making way for other cars to merge safely, making a point of saying good morning to folks and thank them for a myriad of things that so many others take for granted. As always, there is surprise in their reactions, which is intrinsically satisfying.

My big Good Samaritan action this week was finding a Platinum VISA credit card in the hallway at work. The card was new, the back was unsigned, and it would've been so easy to use to acquire ill-gotten gains. Fortunately for the owner, this was never my intention.

I found it in front of the elevators, so it could've belonged to anyone in the building. Phoning the credit card company to cancel the card was my last resort, because I wanted to find the person who owned this. Canceling a credit card is such a pain in the keister, especially when you use it all the time. If this guy had a Platinum card, he probably uses it alot for business.

After knocking on a few doors in the building, I finally found the office where the guy worked. When I told the receptionist that I found the card in front of the elevators, she nearly fell off her stool in surprise to exclaim "Well, you're honest!"

Honestly, I think most people would have done the right thing in the same situation. It's due to a healthy amount of cynicism when we paint a majority of the population with the worst that a vast minority has to offer.

But doing the right thing does help to restore faith. So keep going... restore faith!

Current Mood: restored

By an odd coincidence (group-mind still seems to be in effect), I was fulfilling the following meme last week (pinched from

the_exclamation. But since I had gotten a late start of it, I propose to re-issue it to you all. And if it had been issued to you already, so what? More good can be distributed to the world at large.

=======

the_exclamation writes:================
You do want to make the world a better place, right? Chances are, if you read this column, then the answer is Yes.

So I have a proposal for you. I have a plan to accomplish this, and I am going to put it into motion. With this plan, in eight days, that is by end of day next Sunday, I will have made the world a better place, simply by following this plan.

I will tell you my plan, and pledge to see it through, and post the results here next Monday morning.

And I would like you to respond to this column and take the pledge with me, then describe your results in next week's column (Note: just post it back in this journal eight days from now).

Now I warn you: What I am proposing is not going to be easy. It may even meet with resistance, from persons who might misunderstand your actions.

These people are precisely the reason this is necessary. They need your help.

So, are you with me? Are you going to do the same thing I am, and together we will make the world a better place?

I knew you would. So here's the plan:

It's Sunday morning. I pledge that, by Sunday evening next week, I will have done something nice for five strangers.

Five in eight days. When you think about it, five acts of kindness in more than one week is an appallingly low number.

But as I cautioned, this is not going to be easy. Those people I mentioned above, the ones who might - I'm not saying they will, mind, I'm saying they might - misunderstand your actions? They have learned that when people appear to be nice, it's usually because they've figured out how to turn it to their own advantage. Strangers cannot be trusted.

Many people have received this message. And it is the wrong lesson. It leaves out the good. Harmful behaviour, in this sense, is like the drop of chocolate ice cream in the vanilla, changing the colour of everything.

But the thing we must always keep in mind is the power of inertia. Just as things annoy you more easily when you're already cranky, so does a feeling of joy cause you to shrug off minor unpleasantries for the irrelevancies they are, and celebrate the simple things around you that you might otherwise take for granted.

So I'm going to do something nice this week for five people I don't even know. It can be anything: Compliment their hair, let them pass first in a checkout line, offer them my seat on the bus. Five people. Anything at all, no matter how small.

The only criterion is they have to notice. They have to perceive that a stranger did something he was under absolutely no obligation to do - for them. And even if they're not immediately appreciative, somewhere down the line they might do something nice for someone else, because you stemmed their negativity by the tiniest fraction, but it was enough.

And if you've been paying attention to these columns you will have realised I expect that, through doing nice things for people, we will stay positive, and make ourselves happier as well. Yes, I'm shamelessly maniupulating you into being happier; I admit that.

So maybe those hypothetical misunderstanders above do have a point about all of us standing to benefit.

'course, when you make the world a better place like that, everybody benefits.

Current Mood: ecstatic

Last night, as I was making my way home from work, I noticed a guy that was sprawled on the grass by the sidewalk. He had his leg in a cast, his crutches lay beside him, and his arms were splayed out beside him.

The time it took me to swing the car around and park it across the street, three people passed him on the sidewalk. Each one took a moment to notice him, but they didn't even slow their pace as they continued on their way.

I ran across the street and came up to the guy. "Hey dude... are you okay?" His eyes fluttered open and he looked at me in a slight daze.

"Yeah... I'm okay... I'm just... tired," he gasped.

"Do you want me to call 911?" I asked, reaching for my cellphone, but he waved me away.

"I just got released from the hospital," he wheezed, as he sat up. "But I made my own way home. I... just couldn't... take another step."

I helped him up and offered to take him home, which was only a few blocks away. "You're the first person to help me. I think I was lying there for 15 minutes."

I'm glad I was able the help the guy out (he broke his leg falling onto a metro platform), but why did he have to wait 15 minutes? This wasn't an isolated street; there were plenty of people that had passed both in cars and on the sidewalk. It only took one person to take a moment to help out, so why did it have to be me after 15 minutes of waiting?

Granted, as I was helping him to the car, I because hyper-aware of his every move. I feared that this might have been some kind of trick and the guy might have attacked me in some way. But in the end, it wasn't the case.

Have we become so afraid in this modern world that we don't even have the gumption to pick a guy up off the street?

I suspect part of the reason that the people passed him by was fear, but I'm sure there's also a feeling of "someone else will do it". The problem with this attitude is that, if everyone thinks it, then nothing happens! It only takes one person to take action, but who will take action?

We need to realize that if we don't take action, no one will take action. Take action!

Current Mood: discontent

Owning a car means I must have an opinion about Parking Meters, especially the new ones being installed downtown. Personally, I don't mind the new ones. I find that if you do get a bad parking ticket, you can use your receipt to fight the ticket in court. And the new Meter system is easy to use, so I don't get the fuss about that.

My main beef is that you can't have leftover money in the meter. If you pay for two hours (expires at 7:30pm) and come out to feed the meter at 7:15, it doesn't take into account that you have 15 minutes left from your first deposit (your new payment starts at 7:15 instead of being tacked on at 7:30pm).

This has to be illegal. If you pay $20 for an hour-long service, and at the 45 minute mark you decide to extend it by 30 minutes, they company can't recharge you for the 15 minutes you haven't yet used (which means you are actually get 15 minutes for the price of 30)!

Of course, this would mean I'd have to fight City Hall and they say you can't find City Hall. But maybe an organized meeting, petition, and some legal action might get something accomplished. I'm not trying to abolish Parking Meters, but the should at least operate within the limits of the law.

Here's some info on how the new meters actually work:

Challenge - hacking Montreal's parking meters

Complaints about the New Meters

Current Mood: Meter running

I spent the weekend in TO with Ms. Carotte and we attended her parent's church in Woodbridge. Once again, I disagreed with most of what the pastor had to say during his sermon (grumbling to myself all the while), but there was one particular part where I really wanted to jump up.

The pastor was illustrating a point about believing in the right God and making a decision on what to believe (instead of believing in everything). He then spoke of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina and of the foolish people who stayed in their homes, watching the floodwaters rise higher and higher, until they were forced to move to their rooftops. He was half-laughing as he wondered aloud why they stubbornly refused to leave their homes, despite the danger. The people around me nodded, smiling and shaking their heads at the insanity of it all.

After having lived through the ice storm, I can completely understand how people can want to hunker down in their homes, wanting to wait out the disaster. I had visited the congress centre and I had no desire to live in a large room with hundreds of others, no privacy, no safety, and lots of noise. If I could suffer through that natural disaster, then I was going to suffer through it in the comforts of my own home. It may seem like an illogical conclusion, but when faced with a natural threat, most people will think they can face it.

Before Katrina arrived, I'm sure folks thought it would be some wind, some rain, a few uprooted trees, a few flooded basements, and that's all. No need to leave their homes completely unprotected from looters for that! Even when the tsunami approached the beaches of Indonesia, people stood with their feet in the sand watching it come in, unaware of the danger they were in.

I'm sure if the people in that Torontonian community were told that, next Thursday, Toronto was at risk of becoming a target for meteorites and that they should leave the city for their own safety, a good chunk of those people would not pencil it in to their schedules, much less abandon their homes for a sudden visit to Montreal. They would surely stay in their homes, umbrellas open, reading the Globe and Mail.

Okay, so maybe asteroids sound outlandish (although it isn't really), but do you really think Torontonians would evacuate their city because of reports of severe weather?

Current Mood: bitchy

All I can say is that it's a very tricky thing to know when to take it, when to dish it, and when to push back.

If you take it too much, you get pushed around. If you take it too little, you're intolerant.
If you dish it too much, you're a jerk. If you dish it too little, you're too nice.
If you push back too much, you're overly aggressive, bordering on violent. If you push back too little, you're a push-over and you get knocked around.

I spent a good part of my life just taking it from my peers, my friends, and my enemies. I didn't dish it out because I was afraid of repercussions. I didn't push back because I believed it was better to turn the other cheek. Then I got pushed too far and drew my line in the sand. This was were I stood and you couldn't move it beyond my space. I took what I wanted and I didn't take shit from anyone.

I discovered the extreme of this wasn't good either. So now I strive for balance in my reactions. But balance is so much more difficult. Going through my extreme phase caused my claws to come out at the slightest provocation. Striving for balance means I need to know when to leave the claws out or painfully draw them back in.

I'm sorry I haven't figured this out yet.

Current Mood: distressed

Normally, I wouldn't discuss this here, but what happened yesterday at the MPRC was so disturbing, I keep turning it over and over in my mind.

Izzy turned up in the MPRC looking for Love Magic advice. I tried steering him away from controlling spells, advising him that he should just do magic work to bring love into his life. He said he had someone very specific in mind, so I suggested that he do an opportunity spell to bring about a chance to connect to the object of his desire.

He then began to tell me about all the stuff he'd already done, like candle magic, spells, paying others for spellwork, and nothing seemed to be working. "Maybe my aura needs cleaning," he said.

"I need to remove the obstacles in my path to get him to come to me."

"Or maybe the universe is trying to tell you that this person you want isn't meant for you," I replied, a bit more forcefully.

"No, no," he insisted. "I'm the best thing for this guy. I need him to realize this. I read somewhere I could do a pact with a demon, so maybe I could do a pact with this guy's guardian angel? Do you have a book on that?"

This was starting to get scary. This was the second time Izzy was coming to see me and I now knew that he was talking about a VJ on MusiquePlus. Apparently, Izzy had spoken to him on several occasions, but had not made the connection he was hoping for. His obsession with this VJ was getting so bad that he had been banned from visiting the MusiquePlus studios.

"Izzy, listen to me," I turned to him, all serious. "What you're talking about is the magical equivalent of knocking this guy out, tying him up, and taking him back to your home against his will. Is this what you really want? Wouldn't you rather he decided to be with you willingly?" I was hoping this harsh image would shake Izzy back to reality.

Nope. No such luck.

"Sometimes you have to force the things you want," he replied, wringing his hands. "Maybe if I could force him to be with me for a few months, he would learn how to appreciate me and we could be together. He needs me, he just doesn't know it yet."

"Kidnapping is wrong, Izzy, whether you use magic or nylon rope. It's evil, do you understand? What you're trying to do is evil."

He was just grinning apprehensively at me, as if he were thinking that I just couldn't possibly understand how right he was. "Maybe if I did a controlling spell on a candle? Maybe that would work."

"No Izzy. What you're doing is evil. You have to stop, and if you don't, the universe will make life very difficult for you. Stop while you still can." At that point, the staffers came to let us know that the shop was closed. Izzy, grinning all the while, waved good-by and he was gone.

This is a problem with the public perception of magic. Izzy is not pagan; he's Christian. But since the church can't give him what he wants, he thinks that spells and magic work will fix all his problems.

What's worse, he thinks he can use magic to get away with immorality. I think if he thought he could get away with kidnapping this man, he would. But seeing as how he could end up in jail for breaking societal laws, he thinks he can escape any consequence using "untracable" magic.

So this is a bit of an ethical connundrum. I feel what he's doing is wrong and unethical, but as a resource person, am I allowed to make this judgement? I'm tempted to flat out refuse to help him the next time he comes in. What are the ethics involved here?