(no subject)
How is it that someone can justify committing an ethically wrong crime simply by having been wronged themselves? I'm having a debate in my mind about a certain stupid room mate who shall remain nameless. I understand that his parents stole significant amounts of money from him, and his change thievery is far less substantial by comparison, but stealing is what it is no matter what the circumstances. I mean sure he only steals three or four or five or six dollars in quarters a couple of times a week, but he tries also to justify it by saying 'I don't feel bad about it because I put change in the box too. Change that you put in the box when you clean.' I can see two things that are fundamentally wrong with this remark. First off, it suggests something about the cleaning habits around here. I wish I could show the coffee table here, but I can say now that of the accumulated piles of shit include empty prescription bottles, candy wrappers, empty beer bottles, empty soda bottles, boxes and pages and pages and pages of I couldn't care less what, 'poking devices,' among other things, none of which belong to me. What's more I can say that similar things have been cleaned up by myself within the last week in an attempt to make up for our apparent sloth. The second thing that I find wrong with his statement is the incongruity; he says that he 'contributes' to the amount of change. This is, in all fairness, true. However, I would hardly say that the stolen three or four or five or six dollars in quarters taken each week is sufficiently compensated with the eleven cents he leaves on the table every couple of months. I wish that in this world, fair were the bottom line. But more and more I find that the world is what we make of it, and we are an embarrassingly unfair people.
So to my original point I ask: Can one justify an ethically wrong crime they've committed by having been inflicted with the same injury? Is this hypocrisy? Are there circumstances where it is indisputably judicious?
Honestly I'm just not sure.
So to my original point I ask: Can one justify an ethically wrong crime they've committed by having been inflicted with the same injury? Is this hypocrisy? Are there circumstances where it is indisputably judicious?
Honestly I'm just not sure.