SEE NO EVIL : When Does Doing the Right Thing Mean Looking the Other Way?
Help me out on this one. I haven’t been in such a moral twizzle since a boy whose name will never cross my lips pressed me to help him cheat on a high school English final; it’d be better for him, for me, for America, he wheedled, if he passed this test and got a diploma and a good job instead of winding up a bum and possibly a felon, and I alone could make it happen.
I hadn’t thought of that kid in years. Until the other day. When I ratted on the man going through my garbage.
If you live around here, you likely have a curbside recycling bin. Los Angeles issued it with solemn appeals to civic responsibility, to working together for a better world. Only cost-effectiveness could make the program succeed, the city warned--meaning it can’t afford to pick up the junk recyclables unless it makes money on the big-ticket items.
The same ones this man was searching for. He was driving up our steep street on trash day, stopping at each house, looking for the cherry stuff--aluminum cans, two-for-a-nickel redeemable glass. This was not a homeless man. This was a decently dressed man driving a car slightly newer, and much cleaner, than mine.
I thought: Do I say something? Do I call the authorities? No, why bother? Then I thought: Yes, I have to.
He reached my house as I dialed the 800 number on the side of the bins, next to the warning against scavenging, per Sec. 66.28 of the LAMC, which says violators are subject to six months in jail and/or a $500 fine. Out front, my husband was pointing that out to him. The man shrugged and drove out of sight. I could hear him clattering in other bins up the street.
While I was put on hold, I debated what I was doing. I’ve thought about it even more since: What would happen to this guy, punishment-wise? What difference do those cans make? A trip to McDonald’s for his kids? But should they be eating all that fat? Then again, maybe he’s just another operator, a Michael Milken in the making.
Am I getting a little cosmic? Am I making a Kitty Genovese case out of a few empty mineral water bottles and diet ginger ale cans?
Kant, in his categorical imperative, said: “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Mom, in her parenting imperative, said: “And if all your friends jumped off the Empire State Building, does that mean you would, too?”
By their standards, I did the right thing. I buy into bromides about each person making a difference. It’s why I rescue strays and gather up other people’s litter and don’t buy furniture made of imperiled hardwoods.
By other standards, I must qualify as the neighborhood Stasi, spiritual heir of those Commie kids who’d turn in their parents for listening to Voice of America just to get another star on their Young Pioneer scarves.
We all agree on what the social contract obliges us to condemn, starting with murder. But how far does it go? Does it require us to be merely lawful or law enforcers?
L.A. hasn’t prosecuted any recycling filchers yet, but a Hancock Park woman named Linda Lockwood sees city recycling money-- her tax money--pilfered on trash day. So she has chased down and arrested seven people. “This is a terrible thing to do, to run down the street,” she says, “but we citizens have to fight back some way.”
You must have squirmed over these things yourself, asking, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” But who actually calls that 1-800-CUT-SMOG line to report filthy cars, the 10% that accounts for 50% of auto pollution? Many of the worst cars belong to poor people, and poor people can’t afford repairs or new cars. Yet the poor are victimized the most by pollution, aren’t they? On the other hand. . . .
You could argue yourself into catalepsy.
Would I have turned in an obviously needy person? Certainly not. Does that make me a hypocrite? A priggish harpy or a farsighted, responsible citizen of a struggling planet? I don’t know. Ask me after the next trash day.
Oh--what did I tell that kid who wanted to cheat? For the life of me, I can’t remember. But I keep watching the papers. He still hasn’t run for public office, so I guess he turned out OK.
