It's Good To Be Bad

Though I have probably had several times in my life when I had an emotional flight or fight response to knowledge or facts that challenged or undermined my belief system, I can only think of one that happened fairly recently. The time was about 3 months ago during November of 2014, and the event was the random room checks by the fire and safety inspector. My roommate's and my room got checked while we were away at classes and when I came back, we had a notice that the powerblock I had plugged into my powerstrip to charge my various electronic devices was not allowed. Rather than first giving me a warning to remove the violation, they simply wrote us up for a violation and fined us $50 each.

When I first found out about this I was shocked, not just because I now knew I had been doing something which was not allowed all along but that I was not given a chance to correct the behavior first before receiving punishment. (For those who are unaware how the process works, usually the RA for your floor catches all of the on campus housing violations which you might commit when they inspect your room earlier in the year. They give you a warning and allow you to remove or fix the violation before receiving any punishment. Our RA had not informed me that I was doing anything wrong.) Paying the fine wasn't the issue for me, the real reason I was sent into a flight or flight response is that this actually challenged my belief system. 

I have always been one who believed in the good of humanity. "What goes around comes back around" and "You gotta do a little good to get a little good", you know, stuff like that. Because of this, I always take the time to do the rigt thing even when it may cause me inconvenience. I turn off lights when they are left on in order to save electricity, I help people pick up change when they drop it all over the ground, and I stay after an event ends to help clean up and put away chairs and tables. Sure, they might be little things, but a lot of other people still don't bother to do them. On top of this, I also avoid breaking the rules, so while many other people on my floor choose to drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, or steal things from the dining hall, I don't because it goes against my morales.

Now don't think that I believe I deserve a medal, a slow clap or something in return for me going out of my way to help people and obeying the rules. As I said: I obey the rules because of my morals and I help people because of the smile it puts on their faces. However, when I got fined as punishment for doing something wrong which I didn't know was wrong I felt that it devalued all of the little things I do to be a "good person". The way it felt to me is that I was doing all of the previously mentioned things to improve the Ithaca College community and the only thing I was actually getting in return was a $50 fine (well actually $100 cause I volunteered to pay my roommate's half since he had nothing to do with it). And on the flip side, the people who were committing violations or worse didn't face any punishment because they were aware that they were breaking the rules and were purposely hiding it from the authorities who be. Overall this whole experience just made me realize why their is so little good in the world: we don't reward good behavior as much as our society incentivizes cheating the system, breaking the rules, and scamming your friend just as long as you don't get caught.