noise, personal space, and Utilitarianism
Where I work, our offices are near the back of the building. The alley, right outside our door, is quite busy and we often hear noises — trucks bringing shipments of food to restaurants, yuppies parking their cars in their garages, that sort of thing.
Today, the guy who owns the apartment building directly across the alley from us was doing something with his motorcycle. I don’t know what it was, and I don’t care. It was loud and it bothered me. So I started making comments to my coworkers about how people are inconsiderate and why do motorcycles always have to be loud, etc.
I asked my boss if his motorcycle was that loud. He told me it wasn’t. So then I asked if the dude that owns the apartment building fixed his up to make it louder, and if so, he was an asshole. My boss wouldn’t really say. He just kept repeating “some people just like the way it sounds” when I asked why would anyone want a loud motorcycle.
I generally have this idea that you should never do anything that’s going to bother somone else, especially if that thing is just small mundane activity you do to make yourself feel better. Like the guy who sat next to Elaine and made the lip-smacking noise after every sip of coffee.
It’s not worth it. I just plain think it’s wrong, but even from a Utilitarian standpoint, the numbers are just staggering.
Say you work with 10 people, all within earshot of your cubicle. You really enjoy singing, especially the popular songs of past decades. Chances are, those 10 people aren’t going to enjoy your vocal stylings.
So you shouldn’t sing because you are going to annoy 10 people, and only make 1 person happy. And really, does that make you happy? Shouldn’t you be spending your time, doing, say, work, instead of singing James Taylor songs? But the point is — you shouldn’t do it because 10 is larger than 1.
This brings up another interesting point — if I ever start doing philosophy seriously, and I want to be remembered, this would certianly be a recurring theme of mine — the ethics of the mundane.
Utilitarianism is generally concerned with doing the thing that will benefit the most people. The examples given in a classroom setting are generally of the murdering your rich neighbor to get all his money and save the poor children, speeding traincar headed toward a group of old people variety.
I don’t think this is a very good way to go about teaching ethics. I see, every day, people doing things that offend me on moral grounds, but they aren’t life or death sorts of things. They’re things like holding doors open, and getting off at the front of the bus. Stuff that doesn’t really matter, on a biblical scale. But this stuff impacts my life. And yours. And everyone elses. And it happens to you every day, time and time again.
If people can’t be trusted to hold a door open for you, then they certainly can’t be trusted to save your life if a traincar comes rushing toward you and they’re the only ones who can throw the switch to make it jump to the other track.
So, because I heard motorcycles in the alley, we are living in a moral wasteland. Fuck all this war for oil shit — let’s have a war for common fucking courtesy.