“What is worse, a child who breaks 15 glasses on accident or a child who breaks one glass while reaching for a jar while his parents aren’t home?” asked Karen.

“I don’t know… breaking fifteen glasses...?” responded the younger sister of twelve years.

“Alyssa, you’re too old to not realize the correct answer. It’s obvious that the amount of glasses broken is inconsequential to the morality of the action. It matters more how the glass was broken, not how many.”

“Why?” asked Kevin.

“Because the book says so. ‘Younger children will associate the higher level of damage as being more immoral than the reason why it was broken. It is only through reasoning that we may determine which case is worse. In this instance the child who broke the one glass did it while disobeying his parents, therefore causing the problem.’ Kevin, you can’t say that you think the glasses broken on accident was worse because there were more glasses involved.”

“I’m not. I’m just saying I don’t think that the one glass being broken was worse either. Just because the first kid broke the glasses by accident doesn’t mean that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Shouldn’t one be more cautious of their surroundings whilst in the presence of fragile objects? And who’s to say that the second kid was doing a bad thing by reaching to get the jar? Maybe he is suppose to occasionally reach for high placed objects, a sort of sick game the parents play with the kid everyday, and he’ll be punished horribly if he hasn’t reached said object by the time they arrive. Or what if his little sister is dying and he needs to reach her medicine that has been placed in a jar, high above, out of her reach, not to mention the dog?”

“It’s obvious that a child should not be putting themselves in such a dangerous position while their parents are not home. If some anomaly had occurred that would have made the act permissible, it would have been mentioned. And besides, the first child may not have known the glasses were by him. Think about it in this manner, a man, while driving accidentally hits a bicyclist while looking down at the radio. Another man accidentally hits a bicyclist while angrily swerving around traffic. Which action is more immoral?”

“That’s another point a wanted to bring up. Breaking the glass isn’t the immoral act, but rather the act that resulted in the broken glass. Both situations resulted in broken glass, one is just seemingly more irresponsible. And since you’ve set this situation up in the same manner, I will have to use the same answer. The first man should not have been looking away from the road. The second man should not have been swerving in and out of traffic. The consequences of the actions are sad, but don’t cause either action to be more or less immoral, that, we can agree upon. My point is that you don’t just go around breaking glasses without any sort of primer, we don’t know what that was, so we can’t say that this is a poor kid in an unfortunate situation.”

“So my grandfather who accidentally gave the wrong coordinates in the Korean War and killed fifty of his own men is just as bad as a guy who robs a bank and his gun accidentally goes off and kills some innocent bystander?”

“Yes, in that they both had the intention to hurt someone, pacifism, 101. One might even say your grandfather is worse because he meant to kill someone, the other guy may not have even thought the gun was loaded. But again, it doesn’t matter what result the person wanted, they made a mistake. If your grandfather meant to drop candy and teddy bears on the people, then this conversation might be going somewhere. I just do not agree that such a simple statement can be quantified with, ‘the kid who was alone is worse.’ Maybe these horrible parents, leaving their kid alone should have everything they own broken and burned to the grown. Would that change your answer, or the books? These people who sodomize and beat their child every single night, and play sick games of hide the dildo in the highest place possible for the kid to find, do they deserve to have breakable glasses? I just think that we should be a little more critical about supposed authoritative commentators. Because this guy is published, does that mean we have to punish the kids he tells us to? Certainly there has to be some kind of guidance when it comes to ‘moral’ activity, but that’s what laws are for. I wouldn’t know that seat belts save lives accept that there is a law that tells me to where one because it does so. I wouldn’t know that drugs have horrible long-term effects, accept that laws tell me not to do them because I’ll die and potentially kill others. And finally, I wouldn’t know that it is a bad idea to leave children under the age of sixteen home alone, accept for two things. First, the law that says so, and second, the story that tells me that that little punk is going to break one of my good wine glasses and end his escapade with five of my freshly baked cookies from the jar I placed on the top shelf.”

“Whatever, you’re making me angry. Let me finish my homework.”

KevinRb

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