2009-08-20 :: 5:24 p.m.
At work, they have this huge data entry issue. My pay cheque has been wrong slightly more than half of the time. I thus keep meticulous records of my hours and have a recurring meeting with the payroll people when we all laugh uncomfortably and make nice to try to avoid the obvious nonverbal messages I am sending them - You guys fuck up an unacceptable amount - and the nonverbal messages they are sending me - You are a pain in our ass and should just learn to live with our mistakes. Usually, they short me hours. The first time, I was short 14 hours. A couple of mistakes ago, they shorted me 1.5 hours. The last time, though, they overpaid me.

It is hard to describe how much I was overpaid in hours because they screwed it up so bad the hours didn't match and the overpayment didn't equal an even number of hours, half hours or quarter hours. Anyways, it was about $110. Not an insignificant amount considering how small my pay cheques are at their full amount.

When I found the overpayment, I didn't tell anyone. Honestly, in the past, I definitely wouldn't have said anything. Ever since I learned about capitalist worker exploitation (as in, your employer pocketing the surpluses of your labor) it has been hard to not feel like my employer owes me. To put punctuation on that feeling, knowing the fact that wages are negotiated and arbitrarily changed based on what one ask for and what the employer bestows based on vague industry-market understandings makes it difficult to not bleed my employer for any cent I can get my hands on.

This time I thought it over. Then I gave the money back. I saw an opportunity to perform something... just? Moral? Either way, I was pretty happy about my choice. My performance felt good.

But What engaged me so? Why was I satisfied with my choice?

I think the answers to these questions are actually the same as to ask what makes a principle worthy of my attention. To understand the answers to these questions is to understand the criteria I have been subconsciously using to shortlist and justify the principles I have thus far deemed worthy to represent. They are (1) difficulty, (2) intentionality, (3) presentation with an opportunity, and (4) justice orientation.

With respect to giving the money back, I had to transcend the urge to keep it. I considered my action and gave the money back intentionally. I was given the opportunity to perform my choice when I was overpaid. On a surface level, given my employment contract with the employer, the money belonged to them and thus was justly returned. There you go - all 4 criteria.

Now I am not going to be making a principle for myself to "return all money incorrectly given to me" necessarily. I think the degree of difficulty/intent, frequency of opportunity and acuteness of justice push certain ideas to the status of principle. Without a certain level of intensity, the effort of devotion seems wasted.

Equally, meeting thse criteria is not the end of the discussion about a principle. The interplay of the 4 criteria ca be more complex given various simultaneous urges complicating difficulty, and different points of view complicating justice orientation. For example, with respect to returning the money I was also dealing with the societal pressure that says "stealing is wrong" and other principles I am trying to represent, such as trying not to overvalue material possession.

Let me now explore each of these criteria a little more:

(1) Difficulty. I have spent many hours looking into this aspect of morality. I will write again of this, as it seems the most spiritual and classically moral of messages (such as Buddha's Dharmpada compassion, Kabbalah's will to bestow or Jesus' sermon on the mount) really are telling humans to do what is MOST difficult, and that is what is so awe inspiring about them. Anyways, on the level of our quest for principles to perform, the performance is made meaningful by the presence of an urge to do the opposite. This is pretty obvious given that if a moral action was easy, one probably wouldn't even notice it enough to consider it. Interestingly, this urge can range from very animal (such as violence) or very human (such as coveting material possessions or indirect oppression of strangers). The evaluation of this criterion is very personal.

(2) Intentionality. Clearly, this is tied to difficulty. A performance must be intentional to overcome the difficulty to act otherwise. More than this, intent means that the principle must be examined. One can have unexamined beliefs and assumed rules. I think this ignorance means that no performance takes place (the unexamined belief is merely acted), and thus the moral value of what is created is nothing. Also, without intent, it is impossible to be honest, so once again no performance can take place.

(3) Opportunity. It was a strange realization that the principles I have been discussing are not performance-situations we are be seeking, but rather opportunities that more or less passively we come upon while going about the normal business of life. It is also interesting to consider that the opportunity is where the performance takes place and thus the meaning is created. The value of the principle itself takes place within its opportunity to be performed.

(4) Justice oriented. Of course, broadly speaking, all of the subject matter we have been discussing is a matter of creating what we personally consider a more fair world within our performance. What is fair is a matter of the values one has. In my case, this is where my belief in a meaningless atheistic universe comes to play fully.

Last 5 Entries:
Does this still work? - 2017-04-16
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Mining the Sermon on the Mount, Part 1 - 2009-08-24
What Makes a Principle, Expl(b)ored - 2009-08-20
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