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#1 | Apr 01 2002

Several readers responded to my failed attempt to steal a duck sign by writing to tell me that stealing is wrong. Although these emails didn’t come as a surprise, my reaction to them has. Before I get to that, here’s a quote from one of the more forceful and articulate emails, written by Jay Perkins:

Presumably the duck sign is there for a reason, maybe so people are alerted to the presence of ducks and don’t run them over? I guess you feel it’s more important to satisfy a juvenile urge than to respect or care about the lives of defenseless animals, whose only protection on that road is said sign.

Besides which, it’s not yours to take. Taking something that doesn’t belong to you is called ‘stealing’, and whether you get caught or not, ‘stealing’ is morally reprehensible, especially for such unnecessary and idiotic reasons as yours appear to be.

From your picture, you don’t look like an eight year old, so you might try not acting/thinking like one. Grow up.

I was at Rachel’s when I read this, and was wearing only my underwear. I had meant to check if a certain client had written, then jump in the shower, but instead found myself mesmerized by Jay’s email. I began various responses, none of which captured my thoughts, for my thoughts kept changing.

Eventually Rachel appeared and asked why I was sitting there in my underwear. I showed her the email. In short order she voiced the same arguments I’d previously written and deleted, and in more or less the same sequence. And on each point I felt she was wrong, and told her so. What she was doing, and what I had done earlier, was scrambling for justification of her own self-serving behavior.

The most interesting part of this was how Rachel’s tactics mirrored my own. Evidently there are three things you can do in such a situation:

  1. Minimize the wrong
  2. Attack the accuser
  3. Defend your character

(I was going to add “Place the blame elsewhere,” but I think that’s covered by “Minimize the wrong.”)

It’s worth noting that I’ve never been one for the rule of law. Fact is, I respect the law only in the sense that I can be punished for breaking it. The only laws that matter to me – and these matter quite a bit – are the ones I make for myself.

One such law or rule (this may sound strange in the present context) is that stealing is wrong, particularly when one steals for what Jay Perkins calls “unnecessary and idiotic reasons.” And it doesn’t matter that one’s accuser is a righteous jerk, or that little harm comes from the theft, or that one is fundamentally moral. It’s still wrong.

When Rachel asked me to help her steal the duck sign, I weighed that wrong against my desire to play hero, and decided to play hero. It was a purely selfish decision. I make such decisions all the time, and for no better reason than that I feel like it.

When pressed to defend my actions, I invariably resort to the three-point approach above, leaning heavily on “minimize the wrong.” You can get a lot of mileage out of “minimize the wrong.”

Of course I’m not just speaking about duck signs here, nor only about myself. The same self-serving logic used to justify petty theft is used to justify the destruction of the planet. People do what they want, then find reasons to justify it.

Except for Jay Perkins. Jay Perkins is a paragon of righteousness.

That was a joke. See #1 above.

Okay, it wasn’t totally a joke.

*

Addendum: Jason cut through the crap and found a nice duck sign available online. He wrote: “Why steal when you can buy?” Thanks, Jason.