you are right where you need to be
At my job, as with many jobs in the world, the currency in question at any given moment is time. Seconds are pennies, but pennies add up, and as an extension of this logic any amount of time taken unjustly could be considered tantamount to theft. I am someone who tries to live a life that I consider moral, and through my study of philosophy I have found new lenses to view real world situations through in pursuit of that moral living. The situation I found myself in this time was the struggle between protecting the interests of my friends and the upholding of the values I hold to be virtuous through the medium of stolen time.
The situation was that there had been a culture built at my work to avoid consequence at all costs and one of the prized methods of avoidance was the act of calling ahead to a reliable coworker if you found yourself at risk of being late. That more reliable coworker then made sure that your time card was punched before the set time to avoid a log in the system of your lateness. By the time I got hired this had been established and I never partook, however, one morning one of my coworkers chose me as the reliable coworker, as I am always on time, but upon being forced to wrestle with the moral dilemma in the moment I decided I would not participate from now until for ever on moral objections. This decision was based in Kantian moral theory and mainly stemmed from my application of Kant’s categorical imperative.
The philosophical theory behind Kant’s categorical imperative is such that any decision I make must be able to be universalized and not destroy or destabilize the foundation of the logic of that moral decision. I made my stand against taking part in the stealing of time through an extension of the logic of that decision to all other systems. I found that if people always facilitated theft through lying, then the rule would be self contradicting and make the system built upon that rule unreliable. Along Kantian moral logic, the idea of stealing in general fails the test, as does lying, so in tandem they are especially unacceptable. In reference to the time keeping system itself, the inaccuracies fostered by the continuance of the system of lying and stealing removes any meaning and any incentive to honesty, and thereby fails to live up to the categorical imperative.
In terms of possible critiques of my position, the flaws come from the incomplete usage of the moral theory I am referencing. As it relates to the application of Kant’s categorical imperative, a critic of my moral standing would say that while I am correct to say that my facilitation of the theft should be avoided, a true Kantian would take it a step further and say that by standing by and not reporting the activity myself I was just as much a perpetrator as the employees actually stealing. This position would come from the idea that by applying the categorical imperative to my decision to not act, the logical conclusion is that nobody ever has a responsibility to be anything more than a bystander and now the moral framework of society has collapsed.
I will concede that my actions in the moment were not completely driven by what was purely moral, and so the critique of my inability to staunchly apply the categorical imperative has value as a way to open my eyes to true morality versus what feels moral in the moment. Although I do stand by my decision to not involve myself, and I do still feel hangups about reporting the activity myself, I now better understand that the hangups I feel about bringing the system of theft to an end is from a place of personal connection rather than true morality. Through the use of Kant’s categorical imperative we are much better suited to apply moral logic to our lives in a way that speaks to morality more so than any personal relationships or social hangups that may typically cloud our judgement.
Reference Page
Bein, S. (n.d.). Can a warrior care?
Brenzel, J., & Means, K. (n.d.). Why are superheroes good?
Loftis, J. R. (n.d.). Means, ends, and the critique of pure superheroes.