By Jerry "Clapso" Avissato
CJ106 Law and Ethics
Professor Beverly "Silk" Quist
Fall Semester
September 6th 2000
Case 3.3: Written Assignment One
"Good Friends are Hard to Find"
The first question listed in the assignment is "What is a moral dilemma?" My answer is quite simple. A moral dilemma is a case in which two or more conflicting moral issues must be weighed in an effort to decide what action in a given case would be the morally correct action. As an example, I will cite the question of how to answer a parent's question "Isn't my baby beautiful?" If you think the baby is in fact beautiful, the answer is simply yes. There is no moral dilemma. If on the other hand you think the baby is an ugly little spud, you have a dilemma. To say no would surly hurt and insult the parent and causing such pain to a person is, I believe, morally wrong. To answer yes would be a lie, which is also morally wrong. Damned if you do, damned if you don't! The ethical answer to this question is that all babies are beautiful, if only to their parents. It does no good to anyone to tell a small truth and cause a great pain.
The second question listed in the assignment is "what are three of the dilemmas the narrator faces?" Number one dilemma is whether to tell the truth about being a Cop and lose the chance to make a friend. Some may say there is no dilemma here. The claim will be that telling the truth is the only moral action. The reasoning behind this will go something like "friends love you for who you are." I would counter with the fact that when you first meet someone they are, as yet, not friends and only through learning who you are can they hope to know enough about you to decide whether or not to become friends. I will further state that I believe that the links we forge with others through friendship leads directly to the development of empathy, which is a powerful moral tool. So important is empathy to my personal sense of ethics, I feel it's an immoral act to lose a chance to make a friend and thereby an opportunity to further develop the empathic response. There are other criteria by which to judge the moral implications of the loss of a friendship opportunity. I can easily go on for several pages about them, but I won't. The most ethical way to resolve this issue is to do what the couple in case 3.3 did, lie. In this way people got to know the person and not the 'Cop' first. Once they knew him, that he was a 'Cop' became secondary. In this way, the couple avoided social ghettoization. This is especially important in the case of Police Officers whose day to day duties rely on the ability to deal with a wide range of people. It could be said to be an immoral act to distance yourself from those not like you, when you wield power over others not like you on the job.
The second dilemma I will address is at best only implied by case 3.3. Even though it may only seem a background issue, I feel it gets to the real crux of the matter at hand. I first described this dilemma in the title of this essay. This dilemma that we all face is whether it is moral to define others and ourselves by our employment. In the case of someone that does criminal acts as his or her "employment" even I would be hard pressed, moral relativism aside, to make a very strong case for being non-judgmental. I could still make a case, but it would be difficult. Given that a person does a legal activity as their occupation, I make every effort to not take their career or other class based cultural labels into account when faced with a chance to get to know them. This is an empathic moral act on my part, and has served me well in my life, as I have friends from all walks of life because of this. The dilemma comes when someone feels strongly about an issue related to the employment of another person. How happy would a Butcher and a Vegan be to spend time together? This dilemma is exacerbated when a closely-knit group, which does a sometimes-controversial job, feels harshly judged by those outside their group. This leads to social ghettoization and conflict such as in the quote "You will only have 'cop' friends because nobody else understands us." I personally don't find the answer that the couple in case 3.3 found much better. Is it any better to only have "Teacher" friends? I think not. The most ethical way to deal with this issue is to not judge others based on their job. Better yet, when asked, "What do you do for a living?" perhaps we should all just tell the whole truth and say "As little as possible." I often give my profession as "Chia Pet� Farmer. I would also suggest we avoid spreading such siege mentality as "you will only have 'cop' friends" I'm never sure how much of these things are true and how much we make them true by complaining about them.
The Third dilemma concerns the wooden box that contains joints. The dilemma revolves around the issue of duty. A peace officers duty is to cite those caught in an illegal act. In this case, the possession of the pot is an illegal act. There is, however, a more pressing duty, that duty is to not harm a friend. There is also the duty to uphold the constitution. The constitution guarantees the right to privacy and that duty as well as the duty to not harm a friend overrides the first duty I mentioned. The most ethical way to resolve this issue is, after putting the box back on the table, I would smile up at Jim and ask, where the hell do you keep the coasters around here? I would never say anything more about it unless Jim asked. I have met any number of Cops in my life, but I can't think of any "Supercop" so absolute and "Buff" as to cite a friend for so minor an offence. Any Cop that extreme shouldn't be a Cop in my opinion. Someone that would hurt a friend in that way isn't flexible or human enough to hold any kind of power over others.
This assignment has led me to think more deeply about the moral and ethical problems I have with capitalism. More precisely I speak of my problems with employment based corporate capitalism. How is it that we live in a world in which a greedy few control the vast majority of the wealth, while millions of people die of starvation every year? How can we consider ourselves moral when faced with such a dilemma. Perhaps I've hit on an oft-repeated theme of mine. That theme is that we are separated as individuals and into us/them secondary groups by such things as social ghettoization. No matter how many times I write or speak about this separation, I always get the feeling that many around me do not understand what I'm saying. Perhaps they are either so numbed by angst fed apathy that they just don't care, or are so convinced by the corporate party line that this is the correct way to do things that they believe this is, in fact, the right way. Are we really living in a world where we MUST work harder, for longer hours, for less in return and have only the solace of hanging around with the same people we work with all day in our few off-hours? This is not the vision of the year 2000 I held when I was a child. I had hopes and dreams for a fairer, better world. Here I sit just three days from my 42nd birthday wondering where did it all go wrong. What amount of pain, death by deprivation, war, and fascist social control are we willing to suffer to perpetuate a system that serves most of us poorly? Is it moral and ethical for most of us to shrug our shoulders and do little or nothing in the face of this separation while the system makes of us replaceable parts in a Rube Goldberg device? How many of us will be warehoused in "Public Safety Buildings" before we can all feel safe from crime? How many will be murdered by the state for a growing number of capital offences? There is a better way! We can build our communities not based on the separation of the "Rugged individual" myth. We can use our inborn empathy to ethically guide us to the just society. I leave you with these words to start by:
"Let our first act every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: I shall not fear anyone on earth.I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. I shall not submit to injustice from anyone."
- Mahatma Gandhi
We can do better�
Read, Think, Speak, Write, Be!