“There’s a cop staring
at me… Would it be considered looting?”
“I don’t think those rules apply
anymore. Do you?”
-
The exchange between Rick and Andrea in an
Atlanta department store
I realize The Walking Dead deals with much more critical issues than theft.
That being said, however, I think it is a good place to start our discourse on
morality. Even by today’s standards people are wishy-washy about whether or not
the act of stealing is immoral. Hopefully, by analyzing this act in the realm
of our beloved-apocalyptic-zombie-world, we can gain further insight into why
this is.
Surely, taking a necklace from an unmanaged department store in a city overrun with zombies without paying is not immoral. What we must ask ourselves is why not?
Surely, taking a necklace from an unmanaged department store in a city overrun with zombies without paying is not immoral. What we must ask ourselves is why not?
Before the collapse of society, it
was Rick Grimes’s duty as a police officer to arrest people who took things
without paying. Once again – why?
Because in the privileged circumstances of a functional society there exists
this phenomenon called property.
Resources, physical and intellectual, are owned by individuals, governments,
and companies and to take one’s property without some sort of payment is called
stealing. And within this functional
society, stealing is thought of as immoral. Again – why? Stealing is an immoral
act because it violates the social contract. It threatens the integrity of the
society as a whole by defying the agreed upon code of ethics in place. In order
for the society to remain relatively stable, such acts must be discouraged. So
perhaps a revered leader of the society brings a couple of tablets down from a
mountain and declares stealing to be immoral.
But Rick isn’t all that concerned
with Andrea taking a necklace from the Atlanta department store without paying.
He is no longer concerned with the rules of the past because they bare little
to no relevance to the present. With humanity limping along like a severely
wounded gazelle, the code of ethics that had once been in place to ensure stability
is now susceptible to amendment. Stealing from a department store is no longer
an immoral act. It’s no longer even stealing; it’s procuring.
What just happened? The act of
taking something without giving payment shifted from being morally impermissible to
morally permissible in the blink of an eye. The act itself never changed; the
circumstances, however, did. We inevitably arrive at this conclusion: An alteration
in circumstance can cause the moral status of an act to change.
“Taking that necklace from the department store was not
stealing because she did not take it from
anybody.”
“Touché!”
“So it was actually a different act.”
“No. The act remained the same. The circumstances changed.
In fact, it was The Circumstance that
changed.”
“Yeah? What’s The Circumstance?”
“Personhood. Think about it. We typically don’t give a shit
about anything until we can relate. If you were dead broke and jonesing for a
bottle of booze, where would you steal it from – the local ma & pa shop or
Safeway?”
“Safeway, I suppose.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Less personhood. You may know the owner of the ma & pa
shop. If not, you’re aware that one of your fellow community members relies on
selling the stock in their store to make a living. They’re … uh … more human
than the mysterious Safeway CEO whose salary is being affected by your
thievery. To you, that is.”
“Yeah, but personhood
is still involved in stealing from Safeway. You’re still aware that someone’s
salary is being affected. In the Atlanta department store, there is nobody.”
“Right, that’s why I said less personhood. It’s still present, but it’s kinda behind a veil.
You can clearly see the face of the person you pickpocket. You can see pretty
clearly the ma & pa shop owner. The CEO of Safeway, though, nah. He’s just
some rich, well-off, white guy someplace that’s not here. Less human. More like
a … uh … fictional character. The question at hand here is – is stealing $50
from your neighbor’s piggybank a different act from stealing $50 from the cash
register at Safeway?”
“Well … sorta. I mean, one’s a piggybank and one’s a cash
regis—”
“Oh, fuck off. You know what I mean. And if they are the same act
with slightly different circumstances,
is stumbling upon a fifty-dollar bill on the street, and pocketing it also the same act? ”
“Well, that just seems absurd to call accidently finding
fifty dollars the same act as
actively taking it from a person.”
“Yeah … almost as absurd as the concept of property.”
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