Stealing

Hello Internet, I have a very important question for you and it's an important question for you to ask other people that you're considering bringing into your life. It's the sort of question that you want to ask someone that you're dating to decide if you want to consider a further relationship with them. It's a very important question to ask anyone you're considering doing business with to see if maybe they're going to stab you in the back in the future. It's probably important to just ask anyone you're willing to become a friend with because the people you hang out with have an influence on you. You want to surround yourself with good people.

The question is: Why shouldn't you steal. Admittedly, it's a hard question to work into a casual conversation. It's kind of one of those like, third date questions when you start getting serious about, "Do I want to continue dating this person or look for greener pastures?" I go ahead and ask stuff like this on the very first date but I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone. I'm trying to find out if the person I'm going to be spending time with is enthusiastic about pondering deeper questions or whenever politics, religion or race comes up they're looking for the fire escapes, the sports page, the weather report, etc. Fortunately, if you're a little shy, it's still easy enough to get an answer to this question. There's always some kind of current event. There's always someone who stole something from someone. To bring it closer to home, there's always some kind of office politics: some petty cash missing from the box. Just bring up the event and ask a couple of open ended question and see how the person sitting across the table from you processes, how they mentally process that event.

So! Why shouldn't you steal? I hope you have your answer ready. This is kind of an exciting philosophical moment. From the privacy of your own home, you get to match up your answer to the answers I'm going to give you. Maybe, you're going to feel good that you were spot on. Maybe you're going to get to learn something, get a little insight. Or, maybe your answer is going to be better than my answer and you're going to be able to teach me something.

The most common answer that I get back from people is not really an answer. It's a platitude. The answer is, "because it's wrong." But that doesn't really answer anything at all. To me, that's a warning sign. That says this person thinks a platitude is a good answer or, maybe they know better but they're not taking the risk of saying what they really think. So, if that's what you came up with, take a second. Dig deeper.

The second most common answer I get is, "because you might get caught." And, oh man, is that a big, bad warning sign. The obvious follow up question is, "would you steal if you thought you could get away with it?" Sadly, the answer for a lot of the people a lot of the time is, "Yes, absolute." They think it's a very clever thing to do. They would be congratulatory of themselves if they managed to steal and get away with it. But, just think for a second. Let's say you're dating someone. Maybe, one day, this person is going to be your fiancé. Maybe they're going to be your wife one day. What's going to happen when she can cheat on you and get away with it? If she thinks the only reason not to steal is if you might get caught then, ah, you can't really trust her to be alone, can you? What happens if your business partner thinks the only reason not to steal is if you might get caught? What happens when your business partner has access to the money somehow, or the clients. Maybe they're going to take the money or take the clients if they think they can get away with it. It's very hard to trust anyone if the reason they're not stealing is because you're watching them. Then you're going to have to be watching them all the time and that's, first of all, impossible, and even if it were possible, no fun at ALL!

The third most common answer and the correct answer is, "I would not like to be stolen from therefore I will not steal from someone else because I do not want to make that person feel bad." In other words, I empathize with my common and from that empathy arises a sympathy. I will not steal because I consider the needs of my fellow man to be equal to my own. This is a person who will treat you well, who will your needs to be equal to their own needs, and then hopefully if you treat their needs as equal to your own needs, you will have the material for a very good relationship.

The nature of empathy is that it weakens as you move away from yourself. The only person who you can 100% empathize with is yourself. However, you can still have a strong bond with your immediate family, your closest friends. Empathy drops off a bit when you start talking about random people in your community. Maybe you can put a name to their face. They bag your groceries. They're people you knew back in high school, etc., people who you would probably still be outraged if something bad happened to them. Empathy gets even weaker when you start talking about somebody who doesn't even speak your language, living on the other side of the globe.

The final stop, the outermost ring of empathy and the real danger zone is when you stop thinking of a group of people as people and start thinking of them as some kind of institution. It's when a group of young men dressed in relatively silly uniforms stop being people and suddenly become "the military." It's when people stop being people and start becoming, "the uniform." It's when you fail to recognize all these people cooperating to develop, manufacture and deliver a product and you just start thinking of it as "a corporation" because it's far easier to steal from a corporation than it is to steal from individual people, to think of yourself stealing from a real person who is a shareholder or a real person who is an employee.

Human nature is the way it is. We're tribal people. We only really have an intuition and feeling about the people closest to us. But, if we ever want to participate with the whole globe, instead of just a little tribe hunting zebra and being primitive, it means on top of our natural feelings of empathy we need to develop some intellectual sense, some sympathy. Even if we don't intuitively feel a regard towards people very far away from us we still need to intellectually recognize them act accordingly.

You also need to take of yourself. If you are ever part of a very large institution, you need to recognize that people are going to fail to see you as the unique person that you are. Therefore, you're at a higher risk that they're going to try to take advantage of you. It's very dangerous to be part of a nebulous institution, some group, like let's call it, "the tax payers." Very few people would be willing to throw you out of your house if you failed to pay your property taxes directly but, all of a sudden, when you become just another tax payer, some particle of an institution, all of a sudden they're willing to do it. So, on the one hand, don't take advantage of other people, lead a good example and on the other hand, protect yourself.

Thank you for listening!