Upon receiving the bill, we discovered that they had forgotten to charge us for the tempura, the most expensive dish we had ordered. We quietly debated what our next action should be. Should we notify our waitress of the mistake? Should we take advantage of this opportunity to save some money? It wasn't in fact our fault that the restaurant miscalculated the bill.
If we walked away without paying, we wondered where then, are we drawing the line of moral relativism? Say we saved ten dollars if we chose not to point out the faulty bill. Would it be any different than stealing ten dollars out of a woman's purse? What about watching someone drop a ten dollar bill and choosing to keep it for yourself rather than telling them?
In all these cases, you gain ten dollars while someone else is losing ten dollars. Doesn't this make them all equally wrong? How do you decipher which acts are more or less morally correct than the others?
If you are curious, we ended up not telling our waitress about the mistake. It's not something I'm proud of, but can you really say you would've acted differently? Unfortunately, I think many other Americans would've made the same choice. Americans like to see how much they can get away with by spending as little money as possible.
In other countries, this situation would've been viewed differently. Mr. Bolos pointed out to me that in China there is an old saying, "Don't tie your shoe in a melon patch." Meaning that it would look like you are stealing a melon if you did so. The Chinese believe it would be wrong to even appear to be a thief. Americans on the other hand, would wait until the most extreme case before considering themselves thieves. I think Americans tend to draw the line of moral relativism later than other countries, which is too late.
In other countries, this situation would've been viewed differently. Mr. Bolos pointed out to me that in China there is an old saying, "Don't tie your shoe in a melon patch." Meaning that it would look like you are stealing a melon if you did so. The Chinese believe it would be wrong to even appear to be a thief. Americans on the other hand, would wait until the most extreme case before considering themselves thieves. I think Americans tend to draw the line of moral relativism later than other countries, which is too late.
This is a very honest post, Sarah, and appreciated. I wonder if you can tie it into larger American themes, however.
ReplyDeleteFor example, how do Americans perceive rules compared to other cultures? In China, for instance, there is a saying that goes something like this: "Never stop to tie your shoe in the melon patch".
Do you see the connection?
Not telling and keeping the money for yourself is, I think, a more American ideal. It goes a long with the topic of opportunistic situations that we talked about in class around 9/11. Where somebody else's loss is our gain. Or it can be seen in the common phrase: "Finders keepers, losers weepers"
ReplyDeleteI do think that it's an interesting problem, and I honestly don't know what I have done, but in response to Natalie, I think the opposite. Studies have been done that rank America as one of the most "charitable" countries in the world. This particular site actually said that 65% of Americans have done a stranger a kindness in the last month, that kind of sounds to me like giving the 10 dollars back. (This is the website:http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/sep/08/charitable-giving-country#_ )
ReplyDeleteWhile I am not claiming that I would have for sure done anything differently than you, I think it may be more of an age, or a human thing than an American thing. After all, I think it's been a while since I have heard a grown up saying "finders keepers, losers weepers?"
Thanks for the props! Solid connection.
ReplyDelete