: Ashley, I am not peddling politics. Perish the thought. Before you reach for your keyboard to reply, crying out your opinions like George Orwell's 'Squealer', let me clarify the point. I am simply peddling morality - good old-fashioned, stood-the-test-of-time morality. Stealing is wrong. Supporting a theft such as this, that for all we know was totally motiveless, is muddle-headed. Your professed support for the 'underdog' in this case is very noble - but can best be described as Quixotic. : Paragraph three of your posting has done little to illuminate me. Have you got your formers and latters mixed up, or are you saying that the theft was a political act? I have pored over your words for a while, but need a tad of advice on this point.
: To move on, I am even more bemused by your refusal to comment on where I get my morals from. Your tone in the last few postings has been as if my moral code had been given to me free when I joined the Conservative Party. Whatever the media and everyone else tells me, I can still make up my own mind on an issue - I don't need someone to tell me not to believe everything, still less to lecture me on my morals. Your contempt for religion is disappointing. Show me a civilisation that has not proscribed theft and I will be very surprised. Yes, you and I both know a quote by Marx about religion, but to dismiss the roots of my remonstrations as 'groundless' shows a very sad paucity of spirit on your part, although a marvellous knack for an alliterative phrase. By this you are saying that anyone who has morals that tell them stealing is wrong, is not worth commenting on. 'Oh brave new world, that has such people in it' as another better hand than mine wrote.
: Come on Ashley, wake up and smell the coffee. Tell me (tell the world! Comrades, come rally!) in easy-to-understand terms, just why you feel that you have the monopoly on righteousness here, and why you are so intent on giving your full and unqualified support to the hero (I assume?) of this story. Once you've successfully negotiated your way through that, tell me what your new world order is going to do about theft.
: I'm interested in all of this, because you are coming across as 'clever-but-naive', which I do not think necessarily beats 'older-and-cynical'. You are by no means the first person to invite me to help to change the world, but so far you have been one of the least convincing.
Simon, IÆm glad to see that weÆre finally making some progress. I was beginning to wonder just how long it would take to convince you that my support for the employee was not on the basis of the act being politically motivated...but rather the employeeÆs class position vis-α-vis McDonaldsÆ. Having now resolved - I hope - such issues, perhaps we may now move on to more pertinent questions.
OneÆs morality is most likely formed through a combination of experiences and exposure to influential agents. I doubt it is genetically determined. Much of main-stream morality ( yours could probably be categorised as such) - but not all - is developed as a result of exposure to in general what is considered right and wrong in society through the media and its interpretation of the law, the law itself, our educational institutions and so on. Doubtless what is considered right and wrong will differ from time to time, but not considerably. ItÆs no coincidence that the ideology which is fed out through these institutions is self-serving, and prevents the status quo from being fundamentally challenged. ThatÆs why the institutions remain in place.
Another problem with morality is its adaptability. Perhaps there was time when opposition in principle, to violence, or theft in our case, was justified. Such time has long passed. The society we live in now can offer aforementioned principles no such justification, and can only be described as intransigent, or as even better, ôquixoticö. For it would be foolish to think that society can be fundamentally changed without breaking laws - in particular theft - and acts of violence, and so on.
In the ôNew World Orderö as I see it, ôtheftö and its source, private property, would all but disappear. When resources are equally distributed, property communally owned and basic necessities abundant, petty theft would seem pointless. But in a society such as ours which is polarised between haves and have-nots, and where 358 people own half of the worldÆs wealth, ôtheftö of a chicken McNugget is not what I would call a crime, much less a wrong.
A couple of final points. As for the ômonopoly on righteousnessö, IÆm not the one moralising about the inherent wrongness of petty theft. And, I was not inviting you ôto help change the worldö. My guess is that youÆve always been too privileged to want to.
