During my free fifth today, I discussed morals with my former English teacher, Ms. Mark, and one other student. The prompt was this: if someone steals bread in order to feed their family, is it bad, should they be punished, and what is your duty?
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| This, basically. |
See, the other student, whom I'll call Tom, and I had very different views on this, so it made for an extremely interesting conversation. He said that so long as someone is breaking the law, no matter how good their intent, it's wrong. He thought that the ordinary person only has a duty to stop immoral behavior that's legal, because everything else is up to law enforcement. Essentially, the law is god, and everyone should stay out of it. (He might disagree with me on my phrasing. I am, to be honest, biased against his view.)
Meanwhile, I argued that any society is meant to support its least advantaged members, that a society can be judged on how it treats its weakest members. Therefore, the average person's duty, when they see this sort of injustice, is to petition the government for change. I feel that because the person is only stealing out of necessity, it is the government's duty to provide their family with food or money. Essentially, that people in need must always be helped, and it is everyone's duty to change a corrupt system.
Which, really, is a very roundabout way of coming to the essential question: are people obligated to attempt to fix every problem they see to the best of their ability? We live in a democratic republic, which I feel only functions if every person does their part. Otherwise, it becomes an oligarchy. Tom, on the other hand, feels that the democracy portion is broken and largely unnecessary anyway, which means people don't have an individual responsibility to fix problems as they arise or criticize the legal system.
What do you think? I'm honestly interested in seeing other viewpoints here. It's not something I see laid out often.
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