Security and Morality
When we built our house almost 2 decades ago, it was a developing area. The roads, sewage canals were well laid, houses were there for a decade before, but sparse. So when we had to fix the Windows for the house, we went for this
instead of this.
The choice of horizontal and vertical bars versus just horizontal bars was for extra safety being a developing area.
But obviously more the bars on your window, more ugly it looks. Also, cleaning them is more difficult. It was a tradeoff for the extra security we got.
I remember working in an American company which doesn’t exist anymore having a Cafeteria stocked with everything from chocolates to beer. Weekends when we were in office, we used to walk up there and pick whatever we wanted, find the price and put the dollars in a open bowl which will be full of coins and currencies. Of course you may say you don’t need security in a trusted environment of a company. But the idea was even if people took it free it wouldn’t have mattered. A company making profits can always give a perk. But the hidden point here may be it will ensue an open and honest environment.
But can we have the world without security? Without borders ? Without locks and keys ?
Right from our homes, our cars, banks, the data we transmit, the accounts we login we have locks everywhere.
The more locks we have the more keys we need to maintain or remember.
Our sense of security and hence the locks and keys have permeated our psyche from the hunter-gatherer days and when man settled for farming locking the cattle from being taken away. Historically Women were locked as well and wars were waged.
Imagine a world where there are no have nots and everyone can have a minimum assured living. A large number of thefts happen not out of greed but out of need. A small number happen out of other human feelings like greed, anger, jealousy and so on. And even smaller number may happen due to some kind of daredevilry or display of technical prowess like in the Ocean <X> movies or the Hackers on the Internet.
So instead of locking cheap goods in a shop, if the money spent on CCTV and all the security services can be made as a reserve for initially funding the petty thefts and in the long term identifying those people and helping them lead a honest life, we may end up having a lasting impact of creating a moral and just society over time.
This can be a social experiment in some pockets of a City to begin with where we never lock any of the shops, followed by the houses and gradually we may begin to erase the inequality at the bottom of the pyramid leaving out only the high profile thefts due to greed.
