Resumo de Homeless Ethics - Rushworth M. Kidder

OnJuly 21, it became illegal to feed the homeless in public parks in LasVegas.Sameday, a homeless man returned to their owner nearly $21,000 in savings bonds he'd found in the trash on the streets of Detroit.Some days, life's moral ironies make you gasp.
After complaints about the homeless taking over its parks,now prohibits handing out so much as an apple core to the indigent.New ordinance defines indigents as those whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive public assistance.
I suspect,agree we should tryto eliminate poverty.So what are we to make of this law? Every advanced cultural, religious, and ethical system articulates powerful obligations to help the poor. Now comes legislation designed to penalize those who do. The intent of the ordinanceto keep parks clean and safeis praiseworthy. But for a society that thinks of itself as compassionate and caring, its message is unfortunate. It's telling us that well-to-do Nevadans can hold sumptuous picnics in their parks, as long as no morsel ever reaches the city's hungriest. That spectacle raises the prospect of legal penalties based on class distinctionssomething prosperous democracies find repugnant.Charles Moore sees compassion a different way. Homeless in Detroit, he had been rooting around in a trash bin near a downtown church, looking for bottles to return for cash. Instead, he found an envelope tucked into a pocket of somediscarded men's clothing. It contained 31 United States Savings Bonds.Without missing a beat, Moore took them to a nearby homeless shelter, where an assistant located the widow of the man named on the bonds and arranged for their return. So the day that LasVegas would have made it illegal to feed him, Moore returned a valuable package to the man's family. I know you can't cash them," Moore told areporter for the DetroitNews, which broke the story.They're no good to nobody but the person (named)But was it really that simple? In fact, a different finder might have held the bonds for weeks while trying to create a false ID. Or he could have sold them to criminals adept at such fakery. He might even have thrown them away, out of a fear of being accused of stealing or an aversion to getting entangled with the law. Instead, he turned them in. Charge itup, perhaps to a desire deep in human consciousness to act ethically. They belong to him, he told the newspaper. I did the right thing.Whatever his reasons, he's left us to ponder three lessons.Lesson1 tells us what's wrong with the Las Vegas ordinance. Mistaking outward appearance for inner identity, it lumps the homeless together into an undifferentiated whole. In fact, some are so mentally disturbed or so far gone in drink and drugs as to be incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Others are members of the workforce whose suddenly changed circumstances have thrust them into poverty. Moore is a case in point Losing work as a roofer in Toledo, he moved back home to Michigan and couldn't find work, becoming homeless for the first time.What if every homeless person had the moral compass of Charles Moore Wouldn't we want more rather than fewer of them not only in our parks and on our streets, but as exemplars to others living inpoverty Lesson1 reminds us of the dangers of legislating against an entire class. Lesson2 raises questions about fair and proportionate rewards. Returning nearly $21,000, Moore received a $100 reward from the family -- a sum that struck many Detroit News readers as derisory and demeaning. But how should rewards be determined In this case, apparently, the amount was set by the widow herself. Was she simply chintzy Or was she harking back to an era where returning lost property was taken as an expectation deserving thanks, rather than an exception deserving rewardShould a reward, as some observers have suggested, be like a tip amounting to at least 10 percent of the stake. That would have left a handsome windfall for the widow whcted it. Or should the reward, as one couple told the newspaper, have comprised the entire amount, in recognition of a finders-keepers, law-of-the-sea ethic where the finder gets to keep whatever washes ashore? Lesson2 reminds us that the way we think about rewards, and what we're willing to share with others who help us, can affect whether we're seen as noble or mean spirited.Lesson3 reminds us that goodness begets goodness. Troubled that the reward was so low, one reader sent Moore eight trash bags of returnable bottles and a bowl of coins. Others sent him on shopping spree at a clothing store and gave him a lead on a job at a local cleaning company. When it was all over, Moore had received more than $4,000 from readers moved by his honesty. What most impressed him, Moore told the Detroit News, was seeing and knowing people care,they're willing to help astranger. His current goal find an apartment. As lesson3 remindsgiving gets. Why? Because the same values that motivated Moore lie behind a desire we all have to celebrate genuine acts of moral goodness. In an age of corporate and athletic anti-heroes ranging from Enron to the Tour de France, the public needs heroes. By doing the right thing where it was least expected, Charles Moore became one.

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