Header image: KF in Dall-E
I regularly think about this short story by Andy Rooney that poses the question: why do people do the right thing when nobody is looking? I used it a lot in China to spur discussion in one of my classes but I regularly return to it, usually after a trip to Costco or the like (the shopping cart theory”).
Source?: Rooney, Andy. “In and of Ourselves We Trust.” Patterns of Expositions 8. Ed. Randall E. Decker. Boston: Little Brown, 1982. 8-9. Rpt. From Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, Inc
In and of Ourselves We Trust
Last night I was driving from Harrisburg to Lewisburg, PA., a distance of about 80 miles. It was late, I was late, and if anyone asked me how fast I was driving, I’d have to plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination.
At one point along an open highway, I came to a crossroads with a traffic light. I was alone on the road by now, but as I approached the light, it turned red, and I braked to a halt. I looked left, right, and behind me. Nothing. Not a car, no suggestion of headlights, but there I sat, waiting for the light to change, the only human being for at least a mile in any direction.
I started wondering why I refused to run the light. I was not afraid of being arrested, because there was obviously no cop anywhere around and there certainly would have been no danger in going through it.
Much later that night, after I’d met with a group in Lewisburg and had climbed into bed near midnight, the question of why I’d stopped for that light came back to me. I think I stopped because it’s part of a contract we all have with each other. It’s not only the law, but it’s an agreement we have, and we trust each other to honor it: We don’t go through red lights. Like most of us, I’m more apt to be restrained from doing something bad by the social convention that disapproves of it than by any law against it.
It’s amazing that we ever trust each other to do the right thing, isn’t it? And we do, too. Trust is our first inclination. We have to make a deliberate decision to mistrust someone or to be suspicious or skeptical.
It’s a darn good thing, too, because the whole structure of our society depends on mutual trust, not distrust. This whole thing we have going for us would fall apart if we didn’t trust each other most of the time. In Italy they have an awful time getting any money for the government because many people just plain don’t pay their income tax. Here, the Internal Revenue Service makes some gestures toward enforcing the law, but mostly they just have to trust that we’ll pay what we owe. There has often been talk of a tax revolt in this country, most recently among unemployed auto workers in Michigan, and our government pretty much admits that if there were a widespread tax revolt here, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
We do what we say we’ll do. We show up when we say we’ll show up.
I was so proud of myself for stopping for that red light. And inasmuch as no one would ever have known what a good person I was on the road from Harrisburg to Lewisburg, I had to tell someone.
by Andy Rooney