Essay: Our society or fairness

Our society or fairness - or what we should protect the most


I came, I saw... I became disillusioned.

On a casual outing to the store, we see things sometimes that make us think.
Picture, for example, this elderly woman whom I saw being asked to walk backwards towards the store's entrance which she had just taken as an exit. The store's security system rang at her crossing the threshold, signaling that something in her bag had not been paid for. The man whose job consists of diplomatically harassing customers quickly caught up to her and gently asked her to come back, for another test... It rang again and so the full inspection treatment was on.

At that point, one can approach the man who is doing this and ask him "what are you doing this for, really?"

Is it for the company? Is it for himself? Is it for the "justice" of it? Is it for fairness' sake? Everybody pays, so shall she? No - it is not truly for any of those reasons. It is to protect a SYSTEM. A flawed system as all man-made things are, evidently... The consumerism system. Capitalism. Mercantilism. A mere principle, really - and it comes first, above some poor elderly woman's dignity. Now, it must be pointed out that she was not "poor" in that sense of miserabilism, no. She was well-dressed and well-groomed, wore some jewelry and clearly had enough on herself to pay for whatever she had purchased that day... But the fact that this person's basic dignity has less value than the mere conventions of society cannot be emphasized enough. Sure, it is a crime to steal - but our system has it that the accusers have the burden of proof. Therefore, the dame was innocent until proven otherwise. And as such, an innocent dame should be treated as such. Stealing is a crime, surely - but it is rampant these days to see the so-called justice that is meted out not apply to the measure of the crime. And, again, here there was no evidence of a crime - yet.

(...)
In the end, it was a mistake from the clerk who had not seen that one item scanned at the cash had not one but two striped code bar on it. A ticketing blunder; that was all it truly was. A blunder that had caused a customer to be not only inconvenienced but aggravated as well. She should have sued them - and I hope she did just that.

For in this society where we, as the robots that we are assigned to be, have to follow the rules very nearly blindly, we also have rights. That is correct: not just obligations, but rights as well.

And we must remind the system of that fact sometimes - lest it will forget that and other facts.

And only remember a series of numbers attributed to us - not our names either...


This was but an excerpt, of course. For the entire text, and other essays, you will have to buy the book...!

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