I found this little story on the BBC interesting, its about a priest oop North (The Reverend Tim Jones) who told his "flock" that if they can't make ends meet then the least evil thing to do is to steal from large corporations, i.e. shop lift from Morrison's and Tesco rather than from local shops or individuals. The sermon he gave has caused a certain amount of angst among the Church hierarchy and local police, who said,
"shoplifting or committing other crimes should never be the solution. To do this would make the downward spiral even more rapid, both on an individual basis and on society as a whole"
This is progress in my book, here is a priest who realises that morality is relative not absolute, but more importantly is manufactured by PEOPLE in shades of grey, not Gods in black or white. The other important "lesson" here is that our morality changes over time as our societies change. Mr Jones has created a nice little ethical dilemma for us to ponder, I can see both points of view but from the perspective of society I think it would be better if people resisted the urge to nick things from apparently faceless corporations since in reality those corporations are owned by individuals, shareholders and pension funds, eventually the buck stops with the millions of people underpinning those things, i.e. you and me.
2 comments:
Don't agree. If someone nicks from a corporation, the masses pay bvyu virtue of a slight price rise (as they do already). If someone nicks from a corner shop, one person (or possibly 2) suffer dramatically and possibly lose their business.
I agree with you CB, I wasn't very clear in my post, actually I was suggesting that it's better for society if people avoid nicking stuff altogether, but the scale of damage is a sliding one. You would hope that the taxes we pay might support a social care system that provides adequate cover for genuine cases; but "there be dragons" of course.
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