Everyone Does It...?

Amazing how we don't think of ourselves generally as being social miscreants, yet so readily fall into that category through deliberate malfeasance, reasoning it's just a little thing, it hardly matters.  Something that benefits us seems difficult to surrender, even if we are not entitled to it.  Once in possession of an entitlement, human nature struggles against giving it away, as it were, even if it is not ours to begin with.

Take the instance, for example, of someone purloining something simple, inexpensive, in their grasp because it's so ready at hand; some little piece of office equipment at one's workplace, say.  A pen, a notebook.  You pick it up, you use it, and instead of placing it back where it belongs, on your desk for further use, it slips into your pocket to be taken home to be used there.

Just so much more convenient than making the effort to acquire a similar item at through purchase to be used at home.

No one thinks of such casual appropriations as representing a criminal act.  And while it's not quite criminal it also is not a legitimate act of acquiring a possession one has paid for.  It's considered an inconsequential perquisite of opportunity.  The propinquity of useful workplace items simply too attractive to pass up the opportunity to lift one, or two, or a handful for use at home. 

It is theft, of course, but a genteel kind of theft.

And because "everyone does it", it becomes a common social act that certainly breaks the social compact of integrity and honesty, but on such a minuscule scale, we hardly credit it for discrediting our ethical sense of appropriate behaviour.

So, take, as an another example, an organized social benefit extended to people with physical disabilities.  Municipal or provincially-issued permits, say, handed out to those who qualify, whose physical incapacities are such that a compassionate society considers it right and proper that they be given handier parking spots than able-bodied people.

There are, at any given time, thousands of these parking permits issued on behalf of the disabled to render them an additional little public service.  And when those holding the permits die, family members of the deceased are urged to either return the permits to the issuing authority or to destroy them and so advise that same authority.

On the other hand, while a small percentage of families comply with honour, a far greater number simply choose to ignore the ethical decision-making behind the situation, and prefer to maintain the permit to make access to easier parking available to them, even though they are able-bodied.  There is that reluctance to give up a handy perquisite, even if it is illegal to retain it.

A mere handful of people representing permit holders who can no longer use the permit, accede to the request to cancel it.  To either return the permit or destroy it, and accordingly inform the proper authorities.  Local police forces and municipal bylaw officers are then dispatched to attempt to use enforcement as a means of encouragement to behave in a civil, legal manner.

In Ontario, records show that about fifty-thousand such permits linked to death are outstanding.  Those who are in illegal possession of such permits, if caught using them, can receive fines of between $300 to $5000 for false impersonations.  Fines that are rather well deserved.