I’ll qualify this by saying I’ve not ratted on anyone since I was a little kid and tattled on my older brother for not cleaning the tub after a bath. I’ve never had a reason to do so.
However all my life I’ve never felt that “informing” was anything wrong. Obviously I’m in the minority here.
I feel that a) I should keep my own nose clean first; b) so should everyone else; c)
you have no right to expect support about anything you’ve done wrong; that’s why it’s called WRONG, it’s bad and shouldn’t be tolerated.
Yet I see what I want to call “tribal” behavior in groups like the AMA, various Law Enforcement Agencies, Bar Associations, where almost no one ever calls out someone who is “giving the group a bad name”. And heaven forbid someone does, the person is maligned.
Is this some holdover from ancient days when tribal unity == survival? Shouldn’t we be passed this by now? I have infinite respect for any group that openly polices itself.
I guess I’m missing something, so I’d like to hear other views.
Thanks.
I’m not addressing the “tribal behavior” but I will say that in my day to day life I do my utmost to mind my own damn business and I think others should do the same. It’s easy to pass judgements from the outside on the situations of others and the choices they make, but I’m not infallible and I don’t have all the information. Now, that said, I judge whether or not to blow the whistle on a case by case basis. But if I’m thinking of getting involved out of no more than an urge to meddle, I tell myself to fuck off.
We adhere to the social pressure against pointing out mistakes, and deliberate bending or breaking of the rules, out of self-preservation. Everyone makes mistakes or breaks the rules at some point and would rather get a free pass when this happens, so it’s in the group’s best interest to discourage those who will report such incidents. It’s the same reason a lot of people don’t like highway speedtraps, and extend some of these feelings to the police.
Former actively self-righteous tattler and rat here. From fairly early childhood until the end of junior high, I harbored the belief/ideal that social order was an inherent good and that the right people were in charge and that we all had a moral duty to obey their rules (although they in turn had a moral duty to be absolutely fair; the allegiance wasn’t to the Powers That Be but to the abstract Good that they stood for. I assumed that with age and demonstrated Goodness I would rise in rank and be among them. During all the same years I was being Mr Goody TwoShoes tattler and fink, I was also occasionally challenging individual teachers and other adult authority figures for being inconsistent with the rules and/or their own policies, and/or mean towards children & other lower-ranked individuals without cause. No matter what your rank, if you were good and rule-abiding you actively deserved respect and others, including your superiors within the system, owed it to you).
I finally broke out of that way of seeing the world when I became convinced that neither our existing system nor any other that could be devised would truly work to cause the right people to end up in charge and in authority over others. So the Authority Game was just another mechanism within which some people were mean, cruel, unduly controlling, and unfair to others. Power would tend to end up not in the hands of people who did right and did good and played fairly within the rules and within the spirit of the rules, but would instead go to those who most ruthlessly sought power and tended to win in conflicts.
So I became an anarchist and ceased to value rule-following and law-obedience and reverence for authority as social positives, and I rarely tattled on anyone. (When I did, it was as a calculated means to a positive end, using the system, not out of a conviction that no one should get away with breaking the rules).
But what about pride? Say I’m an honest police officer and I’m damn proud of being on the force. Now say there’s a dishonest cop who IMO is tarnishing the force’s reputation. Why should I look the other way, or feel like I’m some sort of Judas if I report the guy? He’s a liability; he makes me and other honest cops look bad by association and I think we look worse if we circle the wagons.
The guy ought to be gone, it ought to be public, to give the community confidence in the force, that it keeps a clean house.
The fatal drink at Jonestown was in fact “Flav-R-Aid” (laced with cyanide). And the reports agree that armed men enforced the decree that everyone drink it.
The concept you’re referring to “not tattling on someone” has another name, “loyalty”.
How do you feel about the concept of loyalty? Do you stand up for those that are important to you? Even if they’re wrong?
The value of loyalty should be clear, but in case it’s not, it’s the cohesive social bond that keeps a group together and makes it stronger and better. It’s the force that makes people think “this perfect may not be perfect, but he is my friend and I’ll back him up.”
Now, does this mean that a cancer must never be cut out? Of course not. If someone does something terribly bad, they should be exposed, removed and forced to face their own consequences. But for lesser imperfections, loyalty is an important trait in a person.
And dis-loyalty (i.e. a rat) is an important quality to not have in a person.
That’s what it really boils down to. Where does a person’s loyalty lie? The reason people hate a rat is because they split their loyalties depending on what’s convenient. They will reap the benefits of being part of the group but will turn on it if it suits their purpose.
Let me give you an example from college. We had a self-righteous douchebag in our fraternity (several actually) who used to get mad when some of the guys would smoke weed. He used to threanen to call the cops or run to the school or whatever. Basically his attitude was bullshit. He voluntarily joined a social group where such behavior was tolerated, but decided that his personal beliefs were more important that that groups. Well, he is certainly entitled to his beliefs and technically he was correct because the activity was illegal and against school policy, but should he continue to be a member of a group where mutal loyalty is a key criteria for membership?
I tolerate a lot, but I have my limits. Many years ago, I worked for a man who trusted his employees absolutely. He believed we were professionals and would conduct ourselves accordingly. None of us were perfect, and even the boss would sit around on the clock telling jokes occasionally.
BUT, one evening when I was doing some overtime, I passed the cube of a coworker who was also there on overtime - doing her taxes. The boss wasn’t there - he trusted that if we asked for overtime, we needed to finish a particular project. I thought about it long and hard, and a couple of days later, I went to the boss about it. I asked if he’d want to know if someone was abusing overtime, and he said yes. So I told him what I saw. Turns out he’d suspected she was abusing the privilege.
Re FCM’s example: See, in this case, I would have to say to myself that the boss weighed the risk of overtime being abused and decided that he still preferred the honor system. I would further say to myself that if I busted this woman by accident, it’s possible the boss would have busted her too. It’s even possible that the woman was given permission to use the computer at that time for that purpose. I would have said nothing.
FCM, I have no intention of offending you. I just want to offer a different viewpoint.
Dung Beetle, this was a loooooong time ago - pre-computer days. And I didn’t mention she had a history of job abuse - like going to “lunch” for 2 hours (we were allowed 30 minutes) and spending it at the mall, or long personal calls, or lying about being in a carpool to get a reserved parking place. I think the taxes-on-overtime was the proverbial straw for me. I never said anything about the other stuff.
And we were Federal employees, so that was your tax dollars, and mine, being wasted.