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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3143 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 24, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Riddle me this, Batman - doesn't "Wawa" sound suspiciously close to "Yaweh" ??? Think. About. It. All roads lead to the One True Hoagie Lord, and the rich and poor shall know him alike.

But seriously -

I like your Wawa honesty index quite a bit. To add some specificity, I think it's a good index for a very direct person-to-person level of honesty. Let me explain. If I'm a no-good-nik walking into a wawa to swipe an order from the ToGo rack that isn't mine, that's quite literally stealing someone else's - one, single person's - lunch or breakfast. It strikes at a deeply personal wrong that's been obvious since childhood. The trope for bullying is literally "stealing someone's lunch money." So, as far as directly personal honesty index goes, I think you've nailed it.

I think, however, it breaks down when you add some ambiguity and turn it from person-to-person to person-in-society. The great, recent example I have for this is from the San Francisco Streets mini-doc by Channel 5 News with Andrew Callaghan (successor to YouTube gonzo journalism channel "All Gas No Breaks"). He interviews a semi-organized stolen goods crew who enjoy haughtily recounting their felonious exploits. They run into high end retailers in the downtown shopping district of San Francisco, Union Square, and quickly snatch as much merchandise as possible. This is done with little to no stealth or concealment. The primary issue at hand is San Francisco's laws related to theft and larceny, but that's for another thread.

A key, but quick, line from one of these non-cat-burglars is "for most of these corporations, it's a write off anyway." Leave aside how valid that is on a legal level and leave aside the downstream impacts of increased insurance costs. That's beside the point. What counts is the revelation of the person-in-society mindset. "I'm not hurting a person, I'm causing a few corporate numbers on a spreadsheet to shift from one column to another...I'm not stealing FiveHourMarathon's sandwich, I'm effecting the same outcome as lost inventory in transit...this isn't a personal crime because I don't conceive of people being harmed or even involved in a direct and meaningful way." When you turn society into an abstract concept, you can abstract away very real and damaging actions. Let's not even get started on "selling some drugs just to pay rent."

(Back to the Hoagies...in a second.)

If everyone could rely on the mental model of person-to-person concepts of honesty, society would be safer, higher trust, All-Of-The-Good-Things. In fact, I'd argue that the primary "low brow" teaching of all of the Abrahamic religions pretty much amounts to "think of all of your actions as essentially person-to-person (or, really, person-to-God) and behave accordingly." Stealing isn't just wrong because a Holy Text says so and because you may be punished for it, it's wrong because it "hurts" God/Society/A stand in concept for another person even if it isn't an actual physical presence.

I don't think a totally secular society has a good replacement for this concept. The "best" I have seen is weak sloganeering - "don't be evil ... don't be a dick .... not cool!" It's underdeveloped and light on content and metaphysical heft. It's not specific enough to guide behavior and is used more as an after the fact admonishment. You do have over-thinking and secular-moralizing intellectual arguments about the moral fabric of society and social contracts but, again, I don't see their utility as behavioral guides. By the time I've digested Sam Harris' long winded treatment on the compound ethical implications of impersonal petty theft, I will have already digested FiveHourMarathon's Thanksgiving Hoagie with extra cranberry sauce.

Told you we would wind back up at Hoagies!

I'm not familiar with the logistics at Wawas, but it may be worth considering the chances that you run into the person who's hoagie you are trying to steal -- and while store security is unlikely to beat you up for stealing a sandwich, the same cannot be said for some hungry trucker?

I think that only happens if the sandwich thief offers resistance. What's far more likely is Hungry Trucker sees the steal and goes, "Hey, that's my sandwich" and the thief responds, "oh, whoops, my mistake" and then just sort of wanders out of the store. Sure, it's probably pretty obvious he was trying to snatch the sandwich, but it's no harm no foul.

If life has deposited you into a situation where you're stealing Wawa Hoagies, you're in survival mode and affable duplicity is your middle name.

Love it. The hoagie theory of morality fully fleshed out.

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