Tuesday, November 08, 2005

 

Motivations

Last night as I was walking home from the game, I noticed somebody had left something out on the stoop. This is a person that I'm not particularly fond of, although we generally get along pretty well. As I'm walking by it, I thought it would be a nice trick to move it. Not far, but far enough to cause trouble. I've done this kind of thing before, playing practical jokes that are mostly harmless isn't outside of my code of conduct.

Then I started to think. I wasn't thinking of doing this out of purely fun reasons, I also thought of how it would tick off and inconvenience the person. That turned it from a practical joke to a dirty trick. And dirty tricks are not within the code of conduct.

I usually scoff at people who look at motives as compelling causes to either forgive or condemn behavior. That's part of the reason I think bias crime laws are wrong. You committed a crime it doesn't matter if it was because of bias, it was wrong to do. I usually believe that it doesn't matter why you did it, you did it. In this case I made an exception to the rule.

I left it where it was.



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