Need to make clear this is entirely hypothetical, I’m in no moral dilemma!
Consider 2 different types of people -
One lives a fairly legal normal life, not hurting anyone on a day to day basis but if put in the right situation would do something really immoral without a second thought just to meet their own selfish ends - ie, kill an old woman, falsely put a pregnant woman in prison etc. They are mainly interested in looking after themselves and not going out of their way to help anyone else.
The other lives a far less moral life, breaking the law in ‘small’ ways on a frequent basis - ie tax evasion, selling counterfeit goods etc and would happily have an affair (with no kids involved), sell drugs (solely to adults) etc. But they have very strong ‘core’ moral beliefs - ie only ever ‘hurts’ people they think deserve it, would always defend someone vulnerable would NEVER rape/kill/hurt someone innocent for ANY reason. They go out of their way to help people who have had these terrible things done to them.
Now is one of these people better than the other because of the overall damage/ good they do or is it impossible to say?
Wait, what about the car on fire and the seatbelt and the gun and the kid again? I love hypotheticals. whyiseveryonestupid!, neither person you describe is acting in an ethical manner by the time you get to the end of your sentence. Whether or not they are following their own moral code is a different question. Morals are simply rules you live by - ideally they are derived from larger ethical principles, but they don’t have to be. Hanging a black man for touching a white woman was entirely in line with the morals of rural Alabama pre-1950. That doesn’t mean it was ethical, right, justified or acceptable.
CG all the way - for me, most of the things person 2 does that are “immoral” are fairly low on the totem pole, and I don’t buy into the “all sins are equal” approach. If he’s someone who avoids actively spreading real evil, he’s good people.
The weird thing is that the only thing on the list of small-scale moral faults I disagreed was not hurting anyone, was the affair. I mean, I can see how tax evasion & petty fraud is a bad thing for society, but it’s the cheating I see as really not belonging on the list. Go figure.
I play D&D, & I’m having trouble telling which one is LE & which one is CG.
Actually, I think the first one is TN, since he mostly follows the law, but not consistently when it counts, & is self-interested. The second one is probably in the CG quadrant.
Those are some mixed-up people, is what they are. If pressed, I’d say the second person is marginally “better,” because his potential for seriously immoral or evil actions is more limited than the first. The first would murder an innocent person, which is about the most awful thing any human being can do, while the second wouldn’t, according to the OP.
Neither will be getting the Citizen of the Year Award in Elendil City, though.
Thanks for all the replies, don’t think the 2 people really fit comfortably into the D&D definitions but its a good concept.
Personally I thought someone who was generally good and tried to help those really in need (person 2) but continously did ‘minor’ things wrong should be far less damaging in their life than a person who did nothing wrong for most of the time but when they did ruined someone’s life.
Seems the OP asks if a number of small crimes equals a big crime.
Sure, if you keep adding things up.
Embezzle a hundred dollars from ten accounts or a thousand from one. Roughly the same crime.
Cause some different people a day’s misery for a month, or give one person a month’s worth of misery. Pretty close again.
Karma is cumulative.
But what if you change those figures and give some different people a week’s misery or make one person bankrupt and out on the street? Neither is right per se but one would be far preferable to be in than the other.
The problem with hypotheticals like the OP is that the actions mentioned are without context. And in the area of ethics, context is everything. People’s actions, in and of themselves, are rarely open to black-or-white judgments. How can you judge a particular action without knowing the circumstances and motivation? Especially the vague examples like “looking out for themselves” or “having an affair.”
The best you can do determine a “best” is to take track sets of each type of person and add up the collateral damage/help and see which group, over time, ended up doing better.
I would vote that group 1 will do better as a complete society since the odds of being put in a position where you have to make a hard choice on the level of what you describe is pretty small–particularly if you’re living in a society of just group 1ers.
I suspect that in terms of one-to-one interactions with other people that group 2 would seem better, but tracking out their effect out on society as a whole that they would produce a significant downforce. If everyone skimps on their taxes, then roads go to hell, schools crumble, etc. Would the group 2 person have a sufficiently clear view of himself in a society and economy to be able to mend his ways so that the roads and schools could be fixed again? I doubt it given as otherwise they wouldn’t have slacked off to start with.
To add some RPG stuff, I would just point out the effect of a debuffing class, and how people tend to always think they’re not doing anything worthwhile, yet the group fails the instant the debuffer leaves the group. A small effect, added up over time, can be a very significant force.
The first sounds to me like a psychopathic personality.
The second sounds like a petty criminal, although all the activities he appears to indulge in are pretty run of the mill.
Rather than using the word ‘moral’, which I intensely dislike, it sounds as if the second guy’s ethics are far more in line with current society’s ethics.
More accurately, the first guy does not have any ‘ethics’, just an aversion to being caught.