Two unrelated but somehow connected items in the New York Times of Dec. 23/08 caught my attention today and gave me pause to reflect not on the season, but rather on the society we have managed to create in this most fortunate part of the world.
The first was a report announcing a huge increase in shoplifting. In fact, the story’s headline used the word “soar” in referring to an increase in arrests. The story cited the case of a man from Indiana who went to the store and attempted to steal some sleep medication with a retail value of $4.99.
While the value of the item is small, the store from which it had been taken is filing charges. The man, it turns out, is unemployed and has a wife and two children to support.
Further into the article we read that more than $35 million in merchandise is stolen from retailer each year. The NYT reports about one in 11 people in America have shoplifted. The numbers are probably about the same in Canada.
In my youth, my peers would often joke about the “five-finger discount” they got on some item or another. Shoplifting seemed more like a game than a crime. In those days shoplifters were seldom charged. Times have changed. Have people changed? Have we in North America become so hooked on “things” that we have lost our collective moral compasses?
I do not consider myself qualified to answer the above question but the second NYT item certainly had an impact on me in considering this issue.
Yeshiva University is a Jewish institution of higher education in Upper Manhattan, in New York City.
One Rabbi Norman Linzer teaches a social philosophy class there. He and his students were discussing the possible repercussions against Judaism as a result of fraud charges brought against Bernard L. Madoff who is accused of engineering the largest fraud in the world involving $50 billion or more from a host of investors. Mr. Madoff it turns out has been a generous donor to the university. Not surprising.
Meanwhile, Rabbi Benjamin Blech, who teaches a philosophy of Jewish law course at Yeshiva had this to say. “In elevating to demiworship people with big bucks, we have been destroying the values of our future generation. We need a total rethinking of who the heroes are, who the role models are, who we should be honoring.” The New York Times, to its credit, quoted those words on its front page.
So have people changed? Well, it seems to me they have certainly exchanged their idols from those who have really accomplished something meaningful in their lives for those based on looks, singing or acting ability, or a talent for hitting, kicking, throwing or catching a ball, or chasing a puck.
And to those who worship such people who, like the rest of us, will eventually age and die, it does not seem to matter what moral or ethical values they hold, or how pointless or fleeting their accomplishments as long as they are famous or beautiful or rich.
Now back to the unemployed man who stole a $4.99 item. Now we must keep in mind that not only the poor, unemployed or disadvantaged steal. Of late several high profile actors have been caught at it. So what is driving this surge in theft?
What it tells me is that a malaise of the spirit has been fostered in our society, a sense of entitlement. How many commercials have you heard tell us that we “deserve” their product or service? They don’t bother to explain why we deserve it, we just do. I guess we deserve it for having been born.
But it’s not only commercials driving this trend. Those of us who were born in the 1940s and 1950s adopted the mantra that “I’m going to give my kids everything I didn’t have.”
Well, having been raised in a mining town in Northern Ontario, we didn’t have malls to hang around in. Our parents didn’t drive us to school. There were no school buses. We didn’t need supervision to go out and play. We didn’t have television, video games, and a basement full of unused toys.
No, instead we had hockey on open air rinks tended to by the school janitor, we got to see a movie once or twice a month, and most of all we go learn that if we wanted something we had better be prepared to work for it. In these times I know that sounds hokey. After all, our children must be pampered, driven here, driven there, given mounds of mandatory gifts and shown that everything they do or say is deserving of a round of applause.
Rabbi Blech’s point is that we have to examine our values, our view of what makes us successful and in what we ultimately place our trust. In North America, we trust in money and materialism. Mr. Madoff appears to have shot that belief system full of holes.
Maybe this recession will help us find our balance. Perhaps being denied so much of what we take for granted and what we “deserve” will prompt us reset our moral compasses.
Maybe it will help us realize that it is those gifts we received free are what ultimately have real and lasting value.
And maybe, just maybe, we can pass those values along to our children who may have a chance to do better than we have done.
