Motive is Key
E-Mail by Calbraith MacLeod Bio/Address
I've been inside America's prison walls and fences many years. In my mind, I've placed the label of snitch or rat onto many individuals. I've heard a lot of inmates call other inmates snitches and rats. I've heard guards call certain inmates rats and snitches. I've even heard snitches call people snitches. I've seen out-of-state ex-cops doing protective custody time in Vermont prisons who have been as closed mouthed as priests, and I've seen "tough guy" convicts who have written enough snitch letters to fill the pages of an encyclopedia.
None of this annoys me.
What troubles me is when the label of rat or snitch is used without a clear understanding of what it means. What bothers me is that "snitching" has become an activity promoted by and rewarded by the U.S. government and by the U.S. media.
When I mention the label of snitch or rat, I refer to a person who, with the motive of collecting a reward or causing another person harm, reports a person's misguided behaviors. A snitch is a person who reports another's behavior in order to collect favors and material things like money and tobacco. A snitch is a person who collects a feeling of power, joy, control, or revenge from reporting someone's misdirected behaviors. A snitch is a selfish and deceptively violent person who reports someone else's behavior in order to secure the friendship and acceptance of the authorities to further his own selfish agenda.
By the word snitch or rat, I am categorically not referring to any man, woman, or child who reports someone's behavior in an effort to honestly help the offender or to protect their family, community, or property.
Motive is the key to recognizing whether a person is acting the part of a concerned citizen or acting the part of a selfish, violent individual. Numerous ways exist to twist and distort a motive so as to present a selfish and violent motive as being an act of kindness or concern. However, only a truly benevolent motive makes one's action helpful and respectable.
As wise men have repeated throughout the ages, benevolent and helpful action, speech and thought foster benevolence in one's self and in others. Wise action, speech and thought are truly helpful to others and never intentionally or blindly hurtful. Wise action, speech and thought are always directed towards helping others and the social collective evolve into benevolent entities.
If one is at a point in his psychic development where he can understand that selflessness is the prerequisite to a sane, respectable, benevolent personality and society, then one can understand why practicing selfish, vengeful behaviors retards one's development into a benevolent being. Also, one can understand how the authorities and the media, by promoting and rewarding selfish and vengeful behavior, obstruct the growth of our society into a benevolent entity.
In ignorance of these truths, numerous "rehabilitation" programs insist that one participant report another participant's poor quality behaviors. The program directors call this "Keeping others accountable". True, this accountability may be helpful in a controlled environment where it is first demonstrated that telling on others should be done only when motivated by a true desire to help individuals keep their behavior and rehabilitation on track. Unfortunately, inmates often leave the programs and, along with guards who work in the program units part time, the "keeping other people accountable" philosophy is injected into the general prison population where it is used in various selfish and violent ways. Snitches or rats use the pretense of accountability to "get even", to cause someone to be locked up so the "snitch" can have the person's job or room, or to gain some material or egotistical prize from the authorities. Motivated in this way, "telling!" is in essence criminal behavior that is being rewarded by the authorities.
The view that it is okay for the authorities to exploit and even foster criminal behavior in others to meet the authorities objectives has quickly spread from the microcosm of prison into the social collective or macrocosm. Telephone "crime stop" lines are now in place where people can anonymously report another's 'behaviors and collect a reward of money.
Television programs ask citizens to help get "creeps", "scum", and "filth" (referring to people who've broken the laws of the state) locked up into cages. Such cash rewards and hateful speech infests society with the idea that hatred and selfishness are respectable motives for behavior. Collecting cash and other rewards for selfish, hateful motives is criminal behavior. And criminal behavior promotes itself.
The alternative to acting the part of criminals is to work from a motive of helping individuals and our society become benevolent entities. Authorities and the media need to promote the motive of helping cops do their jobs, not for vengeance or rewards, but for the good of society and offenders. This view says, let us, as a social collective, find and help these people to stop hurting our society and themselves. This view forwards the truth that to be sane, respectable individuals and social collectives need to live and act, not for ourselves but for others. We need to begin demonstrating an unfaltering devotion to generosity, kindness, morality, wisdom, forbearance, truthfulness, and compassion. The idea that revenge, violence, or selfishness owns any harbor in a sane individual or a society is itself mere madness.
We are here for only a part of a century. We do not own the morality of the social collective. We are only here to preserve it and further it by good example and by good works. What will our century's legacy be?
READER Comments:
I liked your article, "Motive is Key". I never thought about how wrong it is to offer rewards for information leading to arrest. I agree that the media and the government should not promote destructive behavior. I don't quite agree that "telling" is a criminal act, but it can definitely be an immoral one! You article made me think and it was well written.
Janet
