by Christyl Rivers

Created on: July 28, 2011

People steal for as many reasons as there are people.

People steal to eat. People steal to be cool. People steal to gain power.  People steal to take credit. People steal to have medicine. People steal to ask for help, and get attention. People steal to conquest a native tribe and take their land. People steal to get elected. People steal minutes from their own days, and kisses from other’s lovers. People even steal for love.

This article, could of course fill many books, but what most of us really wonder about is why we have such high opinions of human morality, or can envision them anyway, but very seldom effectively employ them?

The reason for that, for why we are dishonest, which is what stealing really comes down too, just as lying does, is because an obvious advantage comes to those who can have something wanted and coveted without having to work hard for it.

In evolutionary terms, people, and a few other organisms, steal to gain a survival advantage. Of course there is also great advantage in altruism, but there is not any situation wherein one can cancel out the other out, every single time. So we have both behaviors: sharing and stealing.

George Carlin, the late and great comedian, whittled down the ten commandments to just two. Try not to kill anyone, and be honest and faithful. It is worth looking up the extended versions and logic of these two commandments. They tell us that human beings should at least try to not lie or steal, but they inevitably will, and that it would be cool if we didn’t kill so much.

Since murder, or killing, is just another term for stealing the life of another living thing, be it plant, animal, or human, one could argue that stealing is the only sin there is!

Stealing truth is surely a form of stealing, stealing my time to sell me something with an advertisement is not as violent a form of stealing, but it does add up to stealing the lives of many people who lose an inestimable amount of their lives numbed by annoying television commercials, and forests -full of print advertising.

Stealing is not something that is going to change in human behavior any time soon.

There may come a time when mind reading, and or robot guardians are perfected, when stealing is at least curbed, but how many of us would volunteer to live in such a society?

Stealing then, is something necessary as a kind of gage of the content of one’s character.

If someone steals your time, car, spouse, or child, they are judged by peers and found lacking. If they only refrain from stealing because of certainty of punishment, they are not someone you would rate of high moral character are they?

Stealing is done by the highest and most powerful to become leaders of nations. Think of political cronies “stealing” bail outs for billionaires. When it is done by the lowest in the society, it is called petty theft. Stealing of this kind usually has much more harsh penalties, such as incarceration rather than high salary and social position, due to the inconsistency of human logic that steals our very minds.

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