Shoplifting

Spontaneously, I’d say of course shoplifting is less sincere and more “morally defendable” than… bank robbery or something like that. This is probably based on the amount of stuff that is taken. A shoplifter usually steals things for relatively small amounts of money, I think. Lipstick and Kit Kats and so on, where as bank robbers (hopefully, for them) get away with millions.

But it’s obviously not that easy. Everything always depends on the context in which it happens. Since I don’t have any good real life examples, I’ll use made up ones… In Dog Day Afternoon (from 1975), Al Pachino robs a bank to get money for his lovers sex-change; a fairly defendable reason, I’d say. Or a perhaps better example; Denzel Washington taking people at a hospital hostage to get the doctors to perform surgery on his dying son, that his insurance won’t cover, in the 2002 movie John Q.

In the clip we saw from Family Guy however, Lois stole random supermarket stuff for entirely selfish reasons – and selfishness is always harder to have sympathy for… why IS that?

The original question leads to another question, as is the natural order of things (or so it would seem) – Why is it worse to do something that’s a little bit bad for selfish reasons, than do something really bad for someone else?

So, right and wrong… it’s all in our minds, right? Social codes that are taught and essentially made up (which does not make it less “real” or useless, but that’s not the point). We (as in the “collective we” or… society, I guess) decide who is allowed to do what and where. Lois is shoplifting because she is a bored housewife and needs a kick. Denzel is taking hostages at the emergency room because he’s looking out for his sick kid. Who would you vote for president?

CASA (Cleptomaniacs and Shoplifters Anonymous)