Legal or moral? Conundrum?
A friend of mine and I constantly go back and forth on how people we know are hung up on technicalities while ignoring the morality of an issue.
Case in point: we know a lady with a special needs child who is violent towards others and who, instead of looking for a suitable placement for him, insists on having him is a classroom with children who are compelled to witness or be the recipient of said violence. They have the law on their side.There is legal precedent for this and they have completed all the procedures required to ensure that their child inspite of subjecting classmates and the faculty to violence almost on a daily basis, cannot be removed from that classroom.
But we were wondering, if that child is not taught boundaries now, what will become of him when he grows up? If he shows this violence in public, say with law enforcement, they will tackle him first before asking questions. The tackling might involve use of force, use of firearms....
And then if it comes to their attention that he is a special needs adult, alas, the law, will ironically be on their side.We see this happen with maddening regularity in this country. People with mental illness, get into a scrape and law enforcement, once it seems that any of their lives are in jeopardy, are allowed to use force to deescalate the situation.The moral thing would be to consider the person's state of mind, but the legal thing is to deescalate using any means possible. Mission accomplished.But at what cost?
Sometimes moral and legal become mutually exclusive.Like we hear of enough legal cases where people get let off on a technicality when it is obvious they shouldn't be.
We are a society based on laws and that is what differenciates us from savages, supposedly. So breaking a law to upkeep morality is not the way to go. But falling back on the law to justify something not very moral isn't fair either. But then this happens with mind numbing regularity the world over.In my humble opinion,the popular vote was the moral and the electoral vote the legal side of the same coin.Look where we are now!
I saw this happen on a really micro scale today while grocery shopping . We had probably twenty items in our cart and my son wanted to go through the self checkout and I obliged.We were almost done, when I happened to overhear an exchange behind me.The cashier overseeing the six counters of which barely three were being used,was chiding an elderly lady. It seemed the lady wanted help at the counter, and she didn't seem to speak Engish either. And the cashier let her know that if she didn't know how to use the self checkout, then she needed to use a regular counter.
Now a regular counter usually is used by people with cart loads of groceries which would kill them if they went through self check out because their brain would freeze scanning things and placing them in bags and searching for the code for items with no bar code...I peeped into the elderly lady's cart and there were three, three things there! There was no special counter, that most stores have, for people with less than ten items. She would probably be stuck in line behind someone with a gazillion items.
But at the self checkout, it would probably take fifteen seconds to complete the scanning and probably a minute more to pay. Here is where the legal versus moral part comes in. The cashier was in no way expected to help her out.That was so not her job.She was supposed to stand at the main terminal and monitor all six counters and help people if need be.The actual scanning and paying business needs to be done by the customer.Legally she was spot on. In fact if helping the old lady took her away from someone else's issue at the counter,that in fact would have been, well, not very legal?
But now comes the moral part.There were barely three counters in use, and everything was going swimmingly well at all the counters and no one was beseeching her aid at that moment.Sometimes I've run into issues at said counters that would take a long look see followed by some magic they have to do at the terminal to clear it up which would actually make you regret using the darn self checkout counter and embarrass you enough that you goofed up and needed the help of the great one!! Nothing today. Zilch!
But no, she did not consider it at all. The old lady was stuck here, not knowing what to do. And the cashier was ensconced at her main terminal watching the lady fumble around. True conundrum right?
And it struck me, that every one of us, at some point in life, will have to make this choice, atleast a few times. It might be for something trivial, like today's grocery store episode. Or it might be something massive like accepting guilt for a moral wrong we committed. Biblical verses come to mind. Sometimes we don't know how God appears to us. It might be the homeless guy at a street corner. The special needs kid at a common swimming pool. The least of our brothers. Recognizing God and what he wants from us is always not very black or white.
Have the courage to look twice, to think deeper before taking the fork on that road. You might not be wrong in taking the legal fork, but the higher road might be the moral one. It might inconvenience you, but you will have this feeling of peace that will far supersede the smugness of having followed the letter to a T.
And yes, it took all of fifteen seconds to scan through a box of pasta,a pack of celery and broccoli crowns. The paying took a bit longer because she wanted to use cash and tried stuffing all three dollar notes through the scanner at the same time, and had to be coached on inserting them one at a time.She tried expressing her happiness, but unfortunately I didn't understand a word. But her relief and gratitude? Priceless!!
And no laws were broken, heaven forbid!!!
A friend of mine and I constantly go back and forth on how people we know are hung up on technicalities while ignoring the morality of an issue.
Case in point: we know a lady with a special needs child who is violent towards others and who, instead of looking for a suitable placement for him, insists on having him is a classroom with children who are compelled to witness or be the recipient of said violence. They have the law on their side.There is legal precedent for this and they have completed all the procedures required to ensure that their child inspite of subjecting classmates and the faculty to violence almost on a daily basis, cannot be removed from that classroom.
But we were wondering, if that child is not taught boundaries now, what will become of him when he grows up? If he shows this violence in public, say with law enforcement, they will tackle him first before asking questions. The tackling might involve use of force, use of firearms....
And then if it comes to their attention that he is a special needs adult, alas, the law, will ironically be on their side.We see this happen with maddening regularity in this country. People with mental illness, get into a scrape and law enforcement, once it seems that any of their lives are in jeopardy, are allowed to use force to deescalate the situation.The moral thing would be to consider the person's state of mind, but the legal thing is to deescalate using any means possible. Mission accomplished.But at what cost?
Sometimes moral and legal become mutually exclusive.Like we hear of enough legal cases where people get let off on a technicality when it is obvious they shouldn't be.
We are a society based on laws and that is what differenciates us from savages, supposedly. So breaking a law to upkeep morality is not the way to go. But falling back on the law to justify something not very moral isn't fair either. But then this happens with mind numbing regularity the world over.In my humble opinion,the popular vote was the moral and the electoral vote the legal side of the same coin.Look where we are now!
I saw this happen on a really micro scale today while grocery shopping . We had probably twenty items in our cart and my son wanted to go through the self checkout and I obliged.We were almost done, when I happened to overhear an exchange behind me.The cashier overseeing the six counters of which barely three were being used,was chiding an elderly lady. It seemed the lady wanted help at the counter, and she didn't seem to speak Engish either. And the cashier let her know that if she didn't know how to use the self checkout, then she needed to use a regular counter.
Now a regular counter usually is used by people with cart loads of groceries which would kill them if they went through self check out because their brain would freeze scanning things and placing them in bags and searching for the code for items with no bar code...I peeped into the elderly lady's cart and there were three, three things there! There was no special counter, that most stores have, for people with less than ten items. She would probably be stuck in line behind someone with a gazillion items.
But at the self checkout, it would probably take fifteen seconds to complete the scanning and probably a minute more to pay. Here is where the legal versus moral part comes in. The cashier was in no way expected to help her out.That was so not her job.She was supposed to stand at the main terminal and monitor all six counters and help people if need be.The actual scanning and paying business needs to be done by the customer.Legally she was spot on. In fact if helping the old lady took her away from someone else's issue at the counter,that in fact would have been, well, not very legal?
But now comes the moral part.There were barely three counters in use, and everything was going swimmingly well at all the counters and no one was beseeching her aid at that moment.Sometimes I've run into issues at said counters that would take a long look see followed by some magic they have to do at the terminal to clear it up which would actually make you regret using the darn self checkout counter and embarrass you enough that you goofed up and needed the help of the great one!! Nothing today. Zilch!
But no, she did not consider it at all. The old lady was stuck here, not knowing what to do. And the cashier was ensconced at her main terminal watching the lady fumble around. True conundrum right?
And it struck me, that every one of us, at some point in life, will have to make this choice, atleast a few times. It might be for something trivial, like today's grocery store episode. Or it might be something massive like accepting guilt for a moral wrong we committed. Biblical verses come to mind. Sometimes we don't know how God appears to us. It might be the homeless guy at a street corner. The special needs kid at a common swimming pool. The least of our brothers. Recognizing God and what he wants from us is always not very black or white.
Have the courage to look twice, to think deeper before taking the fork on that road. You might not be wrong in taking the legal fork, but the higher road might be the moral one. It might inconvenience you, but you will have this feeling of peace that will far supersede the smugness of having followed the letter to a T.
And yes, it took all of fifteen seconds to scan through a box of pasta,a pack of celery and broccoli crowns. The paying took a bit longer because she wanted to use cash and tried stuffing all three dollar notes through the scanner at the same time, and had to be coached on inserting them one at a time.She tried expressing her happiness, but unfortunately I didn't understand a word. But her relief and gratitude? Priceless!!
And no laws were broken, heaven forbid!!!
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