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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
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<<...that can cost the government huge sums...>>
People have the right to smoke. In fact, I would make the libertarian argument that they have the right to use any drug they wish, privately. That the government places itself in a co-dependent relationship with smokers is another matter. Who, if anyone, should bear the cost of their damaged health is a complex question of responsibility, especially since tobacco is addictive and especially since the government more or less sanctions its marketing to those immortals otherwise known as teenagers.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 13,858 |
Dear IP: if people have the right to smoke, the rest of us ought to have the right to
refuse to pay for their medical expenses. I have had to take care of some smokers
dying horribly with lung cancer. The TV should show some of them every day.
It would be genuinely educational.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
<<if people have the right to smoke, the rest of us ought to have the right to refuse to pay for their medical expenses. >>
Essentially, I agree with you. I just think the web of responsibility is a little bit complicated.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Responsibility aside, don't you think it might be a kindness to prevent
high probability of a very long, very painful death? Even if it meant
taking away a "right"?
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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833 |
a theory of moral development espoused by a guy named Lawrence Kohlberg
Wow, thanks - that was fascinating. I knew the first stage would be an infant but it was interesting to see the rest of the progression.
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833 |
Okay, I have another suggestion for trying to determine how we decide what is "right" - or at least, a couple of situations to offer up that I would be interested to see people discuss.
A friend told me that when she goes shopping, she always takes a few chocolate-covered almonds out of the bulk bin to eat on her way around. She told me this a propos her boyfriend being shocked by this behaviour. What she then said to me: "I mean, come on, if that's the worst thing I do in my life....what's the harm?"
I have to confess I was shocked too - but then I got to thinking how almost everyone "steals" during his/her life. Which of us has never made a personal photocopy at work, for example? I know I've done that, and of course rationalised it away somehow.
At one place I used to work, a theatre, I was told that the janitorial staff didn't put spare rolls of TP in the loo because...believe it or not...people STOLE them. I am wondering who on earth can justify to herself (this happened in the ladies', not the gents') stealing a whole roll of loo paper, while attending a theatre production? I mean really. Gimme a break.
Yet how is that different from the illicit photocopy or handful of choccie almonds? which were both justified away by the respective perpetrators.
Wow....I just picked up Gail Godwin's The Good Husband, hoping to find the bit about stealing, and the book fell open at it. Curious synchronicity....(maybe synchronicity is always curious!):
"...unless you checked the answers you did because you felt those were the right ones, the ones I would expect you to check."
"No, I just checked the ones that were the truth."
"Ah, the truth," he said, putting a mysterious spin on the word...."Look, why don't we take a look at a specific question and I'll show you what I'm getting at."
The question was, "Have you ever stolen anything?" Alice had checked the box marked "no," without hesitation.
"Almost everyone, at some time in their lives, has taken something that wasn't theirs...some little thing...maybe just someone else's pencil. Something that hardly seems worth remembering."
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"No, I'm sorry, but I haven't. I'm sure I would remember it if I did. It would bother me."
(p284 in the Ballantyne Books paperback ed., 1994)
Perhaps that's really what it boils down to? that how we know what is right, is by how our conscience nags at us when we have done something wrong. But then that poses the question: what is a conscience and how is it formed? which is perhaps the same question as "how do we know what is right?"
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
<<...a kindness to prevent...>>
Yes, I suppose. But I'm not in favor or prohibition. The nice thing about Tobacco is there's really not much apart from immaturity to induce one to pick up the habit. So it may not be a question of abridging a right to smoke as putting an end to the criminal deception of the purveyors of smokes. But that's since we're talking about rights. The one thing I couldn't keep myself from lecturing my goddaughter about was her taking up smoking a couple of years ago. I agree, cancer isn't pretty.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Stealing is wrong. Period. The fact that it's wrong doesn't keep those who steal from stealing, whether it's making personal copies at the office or taking a sample (uninvited) from a chocolate bin.
If something doesn't belong to you, you shouldn't take it. You've assumed the position of ownership when that position wasn't warranted.
If you're bound and determined to take something (anything) that doesn't belong to you, then the least you can do is ask for permission. I have no idea what the chocolate bin owner (or supervisor) would say to your request. I'd expect that most owners or supervisors could care less if you asked permission to make some personal copies from the copier. The most interesting thing, in asking, would be to judge our individual reactions in receiving a refusal. Most people (I'll bet!) are afraid to ask in the first place, and that's the point that those rationalizations come marching in.
I used to be acquainted with a multi-millionaire (honest to goodness) who took a pocketful of paper napkins whenever he went out to lunch. I thought it was wrong and certainly unnecessary given his financial means, but I never said anything since part of my personal ethics is to avoid commenting on negative behaviors of others. I've got enough in this boat of mine to keep me busy correcting myself.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
Nothing to do with words or with right and wrong.
Merely an observation.
A friend of mine, interesting fellow with whom I've lost contact for some years now, introduced me to a friend of his. We showed up at the third party's house and there was a General Lee looking car parked out front (not *that* uncommon) back in Louisville. We knock on the door and a man answers. We're about early twentyish and this man is in his fourties or perhaps fifties, so I assume (an assumption later confirmed) that he is the father of the person we are to meet. He's wearing a housecoat, which seems odd to me as it's only 6:30 and as he walks us downstairs to his son's room in the basement, he asks us both, "Do you boys smoke?" "Uh, no sir," we each respond. "Well, that's good, very good. Don't start! Don't ever start!" his smile seems not forced, but weary. "No, sir. We really don't like it at all." And then out of the blue "You know, I smoked for years and years and I lost one of my lungs to it." I don't recall our response to that, as I think we were both stunned that someone we had not known 60 seconds should give us this bit of unsolicited personal information.
As the basement door opens, the reek of cigarettes is overpowering and a fog of smoke is everywhere. We see the source of the smoke, a young man seemingly close to our age. This was the person we came to see, the one-lunged man's son. He had a cigarette in his mouth. His fingers were stained. There was a fog in the air. Very shortly, he lit another cigarette, without putting the other out - in fact, he left the last half inch burning. I looked around and I noticed there were at least two or three other butts still smoldering.
We went out to a bar that night, which I don't like anyway because I can never hear what people say (maybe that's part of why I didn't like Ulysses - too much like being in a noisy bar). But I was bothered that whole evening, not just by the thought of the one-lunged man, but the fact that his son was heading down the same path. He must have felt horrible guilt about his son's addiction. But not for long. He died within a few weeks.
k
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old hand
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OP
old hand
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If something doesn't belong to you, you shouldn't take it. You've assumed the position of ownership when that position wasn't warranted.
But what about those who believe that "property is theft"? How do we know who is right - those who think as you do, WW, and those who believe in the communality of all things?
[devil's advocate-e]
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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