Re: Ethics

Mood: Introspective
Music: Maroon 5

It has recently come to my attention that I have a problem:

I am obsessed with ethics.

Well, not really a problem. I just find it fascinating. Its amazing to me how unethical people really are. I'm among them to be sure, but it seems like theres a difference between me and most others in that I am VERY aware of every unethical act I commit, no matter how inconsequential (Just to give you an example, I'm currently debating whether I should save the Boy Scouts money by shopping at Wal-Mart when purchasing stuff for camp on their dime, even though I know it hurts America and the economy and I don't shop there with my own money of which I have very little...yes I think too damn much)

But its very unsettling at times. I find myself feeling like I can't enjoy life as much as other people. Because, even after I argue internally with myself and finally DO convince myself to commit said whatever atrocity that I have convinced myself is wrong, I end up retracing it in my head and, though nothing went wrong, no one got hurt, and nothing bad happened, I always end up losing sleep over it.

It's gotten so bad that I can't even lie anymore, even about little things. I remember with fondness the days when I could tell a teacher that I really DID turn that homework assignment in or say to a girl that the last thing I was interested in was sex (not that its something I expect or anything, but lets be honest: I'm a 21 year old male, its floating around in this giant head of mine somewhere I promise). Those were good times.

A couple weeks ago I faced another ethical dillemma: when one of the teenagers working for me at camp asks how he's doing, should I tell him that he is a worthless waste of my time, his mere presence makes my job take longer than it would were he not there thus leaving me short-staffed, he has an incredible ability to screw up even the simplest of tasks, and that I never want to see him in my area again; or do I tell him he's doing fine while doing my best not to strangle him? You see, if I do the former, I could shatter his fragile teenage self-esteem, but if I do the latter, I'm doing both of us a disservice by lying; me because I'll lose sleep over it and him because he wouldn't know that he was very incredibly bad at his job. Naturally, I was trying to decide what level of mediation between the two answers was appropriate, but all of that was for naught because he answered that question for us when he whipped out his pocketknife and started cutting on the benches on the range for no reason short of being bored, so I just fired him.

Not a great example, but indicative of the crap that is constantly going through my head. So yes I am, for lack of a better term, a crazy person. How other people can commit far more atrocious acts than buying a mop assembled by a phillipino child and sold by a person who has worked at the store for a decade and still only makes a quarter above minimum wage is mind boggling to me. Yet, not only do they do it, they do it without even thinking about it.

Gotta love it.