Good Decisions and Otherwise by Little Dog

Chapter Four

‘And what about bad people?’ asked Alfie on the way home from Oxford.

‘Ah yes’ said Mr Wright.

‘Indeed’ said Mrs Wright, ‘where do bad people, and more specifically burglars fit into your ethical schema?’

‘What seems to be the case,’ replied Mr Wright, ‘worryingly, is that here we have bad intentions, from which ideas have been devised, decisions taken, taken and then implemented, effectively, let us not call it well, or good that they should succeed, but we cannot deny it, what they wanted to do worked. Our neighbours were robbed.’

‘But why?’ asked Sophie. ‘How could anyone do that?’

‘But my child why people should be bad is one of the great debates of human existence, but know first that we were made free, and our behaviour only has value in that context. Because we are free, we can, and perhaps it is enough to say that someone will, in the passing of all that may be.’

‘Brian…’ said Mrs Wright, ‘really… I don't know…’

‘Most often people steal because of a misappreciation of benefit and cost. They are attracted in excess to money, property or some other possession, and fail to estimate properly the cost, to the other person of losing it, and to themselves, for committing an offence.

‘However there is a chance that the burglars reported this morning in the newspaper were merely poor, and hungry, and seeing no other way to survive, turned to crime. I doubt it, in this case, for it does not seem like a crime of desperation. No these are professionals, I suppose.’

‘Well let us hope they are caught’ said Mrs Wright. ‘I hope that they are arrested and punished, sent to prison, because, children, they need to be taught the lesson that crime does not pay. Not in the end.’

‘Very true Rebecca, and I have little doubt about it - they will be caught, for rarely is effective decision making maintained with bad intentions. Rarely will it stand that perpetrators profit at the expense of their victims. Rarely beyond the very short term.

‘Of course it is against the law, as laid down by the country, which between us we uphold, but it is also a natural law, enforced in the essence of being, where the emotional weight of guilt will bring a man down by itself. In fact I would go so far as to argue that ultimately there can be no such thing as effective decision making when the intentions concerned are bad. There is a real cost to bad behaviour, which may only be displaced so far, and it is for this that criminal success so surely and so soon turns to failure. No, bad intentions will not be. Bad intentions will be bungled. The heart is not in them. The head will not outhink goodness. Where might one run, that would have bad rather than good?

‘In which case, we have another combination. To bear a bad intention is by precondition to bring into being error, which must necessarily multiply itself, if at all, through misconception and miscalculation. Of course it should be no surprise that thereafter the job itself does not go as planned. Inevitably mistakes will be made, just as we are all sure to make mistakes, wherever our aim, but here they will be punished. Just as you say Rebecca.

‘Here is an interesting area of the schema, where bad intentions fail. The things that happen in it can be most surprising, for they are not what anyone wanted. We might see that there is at the end a kind of space, whether the opportunity for change, or only a state of peace, and an affirmation of the truth.

‘We should not forget the absence of good intentions, which is a different thing than having specifically bad intentions. Laziness, a lack of consideration, cowardice and infirmity are all good examples, and it is not difficult to imagine how each of these may soon turn bad. Indeed it is a slippery slope, and many bad intentions begin in weakness.’

‘That will do my dear’ said Mrs Wright. ‘Enough for today.’

‘One more question’ asked Alfie.

‘What is it?’ demanded Mrs Wright.

‘How do we know that little dog will be good?’

‘Let's be honest Alfie he’s just a dog’ replied Mrs Wright. ‘How badly wrong might it possibly go? He's hardly going to take over the world is he?’

‘But that brings us to a much better question’ intervened Mr Wright. ‘Why are people good, rather than bad? Why is it all far better than it might be, for this is certainly not the worst of it. Simply, for that we make our approach correct, which is to say that we properly appreciate benefit and cost, rather than otherwise. It is not difficult to see that helping someone, rather than hurting them, offers greater value, nor to imagine how important the reward, the potential impact, when one considers that society is a product of individual behaviours. We are good for all of our own sakes. However, there is something else, perhaps a far stronger argument than that, which is to say that nature is good, that all of this - whether rich or poor, happy or sad, virtuous or sinful - is intrinsically good. We might think then that existence has a quality - the quality of goodness, which is what normally happens, except for if things go very wrong. Perhaps we should go so far, go ahead and say it, the deduction, that on the other hand, sin is unnatural.’

‘No doubt you're right Brian’ replied Mrs Wright, again with an air of closure, to which this time the family fell to silence.

‘I will speak to the neighbours in any case' he eventually remarked, ‘to see if there is anything to do.’

‘Yes good idea’ said Mrs Wright. ‘And what about Dawn and Peter?’

‘I don’t know’ replied Mr Wright. ‘Perhaps you could call? I don't mean to be insensitive but perhaps you could find out a few things, how it happened, how did the burglars break in - were there locks, alarms, broken windows - it's just so I can think of whether we might be made more secure. What else can we do? Now of course we have little dog, although I am not sure he's quiet ready for such heroics.’

In the backseat Sophie gave little dog a conspiratorial smile.

‘But of course’ replied Mrs Wright, this time with a victorious note to her voice, yet only half serious, ‘it is at times like this that an ethical schema is most useful. What do good intentions multiplied by good decision making lead to, in the event that a criminal syndicate chooses to present itself in the neighbourhood?’

However, she regretted her question immediately, to see the twinkle that emerged from the deep of Mr Wright’s eyes.

‘The true value of the approach’ said Mr Wright, glad to be back on his favourite topic, ‘is evident in attempting to define the scope, and to structure it, so that we might look there for inspiration, faced as we are with difficulty and trouble, and discuss between the options what might be the best way forwards.

‘What good intentions are there? I believe we may reduce all life to a list of no more than four - four good intentions - which are: to help, to build, to learn, to be. To begin with the last of these, if not the least, the being of peace and of joy, of praise, of kindness and of love, is our basic position. To learn is to endeavour for further potential. To build is to increase our reserve. To help includes to teach, to rescue, to defend, to show, to cheer, to support.

‘The approach is valuable because it helps us to focus on the essence of what there is to achieve. Which of them seem useful to you?’

‘We must defend little dog' said Sophie, much amused.

‘Perhaps he will defend you’ replied Mr Wright.

‘Little dog be careful’ warned Sophie.

‘We should learn’ said Alfie. ‘We must find out who the burglars are, so that we know if they are coming.’

‘That is a job for the police’ said Mrs Wright. ‘And now we are home, so it is time to be peaceful.’