Megalomania.me

Should I Accept a Cash Reward for Doing the Right Thing?

Question:

My 12-year-old son and I found a cellphone in the back seat of a taxi. I called someone on the owner’s contact list … and I gave him the phone. He … wanted to give us $40 to express his thanks. My son started to take it. I said: “Thank you, but no thank you. We didn’t do this for a reward.” … He doesn’t see why we didn’t take money for a good deed. Even some of my friends said I should have taken the “reward.” What do you think?

Correct answer:

First, you did the right thing by returning missing property to its owner. The owner then did the right thing by offering a reward for it. Then you did the right thing again by turning down the reward.

If the owner wanted to be perfectly gracious, he could have insisted that you accept the reward that he offered. And if you wanted to be perfectly gracious (or if you wanted to demonstrate it to your son), you could have accepted the reward – only to donate it to charity.

But those extra steps aren’t strictly necessary; the important things are that missing property was returned to its owner and that the owner expressed his gratitude for it.

Nor is there any reason for someone who returns a cell phone to its owner not to get rewarded for it. Don’t mistake the motive for a kind deed with its outcome.

Question:

An acquaintance of mine was recently diagnosed with an incurable cancer. He has health insurance but decided to spend his small retirement savings in a nontraditional medical clinic in Mexico. He was prescribed vitamins and other homeopathic treatments for a sizable sum. As he is now unable to pay his living expenses, he has started raising money online. I am a health care provider and realize the importance of combining traditional and nontraditional medicine. I disagree, however, with his departure from science-based treatment and advice. What duty do I have to help him financially?

Correct answer:

You have no duty to help him financially. His insurance has a duty to help him financially – with relevant and valid medical bills. Since, however, any money you donate to him is likely to be used for homeopathy, or fungibly to offset the costs of homeopathy, you should avoid giving him any money.

If this were a friend rather than merely an acquaintance, I would recommend other forms of help like cooking meals or cleaning his house, but as this is a person that you may not know well at all, visiting in the hospital should be plenty.

Question:

While in the process of purchasing a home, I discovered that concrete for its foundation was supplied by a company whose product has crumbled in tens of thousands of homes in my state. Most homeowners have been ruined, as there is no relief from insurance or FEMA and little to no relief from the state. I did not buy the house, but I worry for the next buyer. What should I do with this information?

Correct answer:

Don’t do anything to interfere with the owner’s attempts to sell his house. If you want, you could definitely notify the owner, however, to give him the chance to have the problem fixed.

What if My Mother’s Extramarital Cravings Are Linked to Dementia?

Question:

My mother is in her mid-50s, which is the time at which people can develop frontotemporal degeneration (FTD), a form of dementia she is at risk for. Symptoms of FTD include a lack of inhibition or social tact and unusual verbal, physical or sexual behavior. My father and I have at times worried that she may be exhibiting the beginnings of other symptoms. A few years ago, she consulted with a doctor, but no diagnosis was made. I think it is pertinent to note that there is currently no cure for FTD…. I recently found out that my mother has been seeking sexual relations through various online platforms, and I am fairly certain that her efforts have come to fruition. I think it is fair to say that these relations have come to be because of a “lack of inhibition”; in addition, I believe that these sexual relations have included things that, for her, would have previously been considered “unusual sexual behavior.” … If, however, this is a sign that she is developing FTD, I feel that it is pertinent for my family to know of the situation. If I bring this up with my family and it turns out not to be related to the development of FTD, it could cause irreparable harm to her relationship with my father and my brothers. If I choose to discuss this with only her and she is later diagnosed with FTD, I worry that the disease might have been diagnosed sooner if this behavior had come to light … My mother is the one who manages both of my parents’ finances. When my grandmother was diagnosed with FTD, my mother and aunt took control of her finances. My mother also noted that perhaps the FTD explained a few strange financial decisions that my grandmother had taken in the years before her diagnosis. If, in fact, my mother is developing FTD, it could pose a risk to my parents’ finances and thus both of their lives after my father’s retirement.

Correct answer:

Suppose there was no question at all of dementia, and you discovered that your mother was conducting multiple extramarital affairs – in perfect physical and mental health. Why wouldn’t you tell your father in that case? She could contract a venereal disease and transmit it to him – your own father! You would be right to tell him and wrong to conceal it from him.

All the more so given the likelihood that your mother is developing dementia, and that you know that this can lead not only to destructive sexual behavior but also to destructive financial behavior.

You must tell your father. Whether you do this immediately, or whether you do it after discussing the matter with your mother and her doctor, is your own decision, but you can not treat it as your decision to allow your mother’s possible mental illness to destroy your family members’ lives.

Question:

My sister is in her 80s and lives alone in a rented apartment in a Canadian city where she moved nearly 60 years ago. Her formerly strong network of friends and acquaintances is dissolving as they age, sicken and die or lose the energy and patience to deal with her.
In my opinion, she has a hoarding disorder and the beginnings of dementia, and she has had problems maintaining her apartment to the landlord’s satisfaction. She also has trouble dealing with documents, paying bills and scammers. She never became a Canadian citizen, and her Canadian and American identification have both expired so she can no longer travel.
I am in my 70s and live hundreds of miles away in the United States. I have a husband, an adult child and grandchildren, for whom I provide a lot of child care. My sister is behind my other family in my priorities, and frankly she drives my husband and me crazy. I am not willing to relocate to Canada or have her live with my husband and me.
She has refused to give me power of attorney so that I can deal with financial institutions when she has been scammed or has neglected to pay bills. For some time, she refused to admit that she has any “memory problems” or to consult her doctor. She does not want anyone messing around in her business.
I see her a few days each year, during which I try to touch base with the last of her friends, do some cleaning and decluttering, have some fun with her and yes, nag her to make some changes. If she continues to refuse help, may I be excused from feeling guilty?

Correct answer:

This is a lot of lead-up to a question about whether you ought to continue feeling guilty or not.

If “feeling guilty” is keeping you up at night and preventing you from living your own life, despite doing your reasonable best to help your sister, then yes, you may be excused from feeling guilty. But if “feeling guilty” is what is driving you to try to help your sister in the first place, and what you really want is permission to stop helping her, then you should not stop entirely – but you may adapt what help you offer to what you think she is likely to accept.

We Sponsor Refugees. What to Do About Their Patriarchal Ways?

Question:

I am a member of a group that has sponsored a family of refugees from rural Syria… group members signed up all four children — two boys and two girls — for soccer programs…. the parents always made some excuse about why their daughters couldn’t go…. in their family, girls aren’t allowed to participate in programs outside of the home, a decidedly nonegalitarian attitude if there ever was one. Here’s the dilemma: There are those who don’t want to enroll any of the children in future recreational programs because of the family’s highly conservative attitudes toward females. Others feel that this would make the group guilty of imposing its value system on a refugee family and, by extension, just end up hurting the young sons. Who’s right?

Correct answer:

Charity can be a wonderful thing, but beware that sometimes an attempt to do good can have the perverse effect of creating negative externalities on the wider community, and that other people may end up paying – perhaps in money, or perhaps in the form of weaker communities – for your good feelings. This is wrong.

Refugee resettlement is often good, but it can not be treated unequivocally as an unqualified good. When you make the private decision sponsor middle eastern refugees for settlement in the United States, you are taking responsibility for how they will behave. If they behave well and make net-positive contributions to American society, it’s a credit to you. If they behave poorly and degrade American society, you must be held accountable.

Your personal project has introduced behavior that you find disagreeable, and unsurprisingly this has caused a wedge to be driven into the refugee sponsorship group. You and the group as a whole must make amends to the community, and you must commit to cease sponsoring further refugees without guarantees that they will not disrupt the community’s values.

Question:

I am a lifelong runner, and after graduating from college this spring, I am in my first few months in a new city…. On my intercollegiate team, running with no shirt or, for women, a sports bra and short shorts was the norm in hot weather … Since I arrived in my new community, however, I have gotten the sense that this is not a look that people regularly encounter, and I worry that I am making them uncomfortable…. I am not breaking any local indecent-exposure laws, but community norms also have value…. Should I feel an ethical obligation to change my running clothing to something more modest in order to avoid offending the sensibilities of the people I encounter, or is it acceptable to continue to wear what is most comfortable to me based on the weather?

Correct answer:

You’re a grown man. As a rule, when you go into public, wear clothing. If you need me to list the reasonable exceptions to this rule, then you are in fact not a grown man.

Question:

I am in my mid-50s and self-employed, and had a heart attack last year. Fortunately, the heart-attack treatment was covered under Obamacare. I continue to pay for Obamacare, but given that it’s a new year, I am concerned that my follow-up treatment won’t be covered until my $6,500 deductible is reached. I currently don’t have the finances to cover the follow-up treatment: Is it unethical to get it and hope to find a way to pay for it later?

Correct answer:

It is unethical to purchase something without a way to pay for it, because doing so is theft, and it doesn’t become less “thefty” if you’re asking about stealing from a hospital or a doctor. If my reading of the question is correct, the cost of the followup treatment is less than the $6,500 deductible. If that is the case, it should not be too difficult to negotiate the bill down and/or to find a charity that will be willing to pay for some of it.

By the way, for someone who seems awfully enthusiastic about “Obamacare,” it seems odd that you don’t seem to have a problem with a $6,500 deductible.

Question:

I grew up in a typical small town in the South that enshrined the Civil War with a statue of a Confederate soldier beside the courthouse. A childhood friend, who became a professional artist of some note, painted a picture of the courthouse, which my mother bought for me as a gift because of my connection to the artist. The picture has been hanging in my home since the 1970s…. The Confederate statue is not a prominent focal point in the impressionistic painting. I had never paid much attention to it until the current uproar over the actual statues caused me — a raging white liberal on issues of civil rights — to do soul-searching about whether I wish to give such a symbol any space in my home. I am torn, of course, between keeping a gift from my beloved deceased mother that few will ever see besides me and my family and taking it down….

Correct answer:

You are filled with terrible and irrational self-loathing that causes you to put the day’s political fashions over a detail in a painting that you enjoy, that was a gift from your mother, that was created by your friend, that has been hanging in your home for four decades, that is barely even noticeable, that will hardly ever be seen, and that is not even offensive.

This is actual insanity, and if I didn’t already know that people like you existed, I would be sure that you were a troll.

Sell the painting on ebay and donate the proceeds to charity. Then spend the rest of your life in shame.

Can I Talk to My Dad About His Affair?

Question:

My mother recently let slip that my father had an affair several years ago…. The news was a devastating shock. Immediately after her disclosure, my mother told me that I could never tell my father that I knew…. they decided to keep it a secret … my interactions with my father have felt stilted…. My gut tells me that I should have a conversation with him about what happened in order to move on, but I also believe I have an ethical obligation to respect my mother’s wishes…. Should I hope that forgiveness comes with time, or risk broaching this difficult topic with my father?

Correct answer:

Your mother was not supposed to tell anybody this information, but she violated her ethical obligation to your father by telling you. In doing so, she also put you in a very difficult situation – you know information that you’re not supposed to know – and extracted a promise from you not to share it with anybody. Now you’re not supposed to tell anybody this information, so… you think it would be a good idea to tell your father? How does that make sense?

If you promise not to tell a secret, keep your damn promise. If you don’t intend to keep your promises, then stop promising things.

Question:

My sister-in-law, her ex and her children have bankrupted my in-laws by taking advantage of their generosity over the years. My in-laws have little for retirement and recently had to sell their house. My sister-in-law and her family are now in a better financial situation, spending on vacations and cars. How can I encourage them to repay my in-laws in some way? … Each time they bring up the latest vacation or new car, I feel sick.

Correct answer:

How can I encourage them to repay my in-laws in some way? You can do it like this: “I encourage you to repay [my in-laws] in some way.”

But you’re probably anticipating that saying something like that would feel awkward, and that’s because it does and should feel awkward to interfere into other families’ money issues.

It would be a good idea to stay out of this, but if you do choose to get involved:

• Bring it up once, and never bring it up again.
• Don’t dance around the issue. Be clear about what you’re suggesting.
• If they tell you that you’re wrong to have said anything, apologize immediately.

Should Buyers Be Told About the Killer Next Door?

Question:

I live in a one-family house adjacent to the house of a family whose son was a serial killer 25 years ago. He was 20 at the time and killed two people. He was recently released and now lives there. My son will inherit our house after us and plans to live elsewhere closer to work.
He wonders if he is morally obliged to inform prospective buyers about the neighbor’s history.

Correct answer:

Morally obliged? No. But ethics is more complex than morality due to the situational nature of ethical systems.

Buyers and sellers in any transaction have ethical obligations to one another, and this increases with the size and scope of the transaction. The purchase or sale of a home is usually the biggest, or one of the few biggest, financial transactions in someone’s life. As the seller of a home who’s going to deal with the buyer of a home, your son must disclose negative information about the home to its buyer.

This does not mean that your son is obliged to convince prospective buyers not to buy his home. That would be crazy. He doesn’t need to make yard signs about the-serial-killer-next-door or bring up the-serial-killer-next-door right away in any conversation. He just needs to show the same basic decency that he would show if a ten lane highway was going to be built next door, or if a heroin rehab facility or sewage processing plant was next door.

Question:

I am Facebook friends with a well-known practitioner in my field. I’ve never met him… I saw a bunch of posts in my Facebook feed featuring pictures and such from a somewhat flamboyant blond woman with the same last name as this fellow…. I assumed she was his spouse, and I’d somehow accepted her friend request. There were a lot of posts that I was not interested in … I quickly unfriended her…. she had just come out as trans. She was formerly he … I feel terrible. I would never unfriend someone for coming out as transgender….

Correct answer:

There is no obligation to initiate or to maintain a “friendship” with anyone on any social media platform.

You became someone’s facebook friend expecting professional information related to your field. Then that sort of information got replaced by “a lot of posts that [you were] not interested in (fashion, glamour)” and, as a result, you “quickly unfriended” that person.

There is no obligation to initiate or to maintain a “friendship” with anyone on any social media platform.

Nothing wrong was done at all: a person can post professional business information one day on social media and then fashion and glamour garbage the next if that’s what he or she desires, and you can be that person’s “friend” one day and then “unfriend” him or her the next day if that’s what you desire.

There is no obligation to initiate or to maintain a “friendship” with anyone on any social media platform.

Question:

My husband and I have our medical insurance through a Medicare Advantage insurance plan…. our plan offers gift cards when a member participates in certain “best practices” such as having an annual flu shot, an annual physical or a mammogram. When I recently called to request a $50 gift card … my husband became extremely angry and told me to cancel my request. He insisted that by requesting these gift cards I was participating in the high cost of medical insurance. I told him he was being ridiculous and refused to do so….

Correct answer:

Your ethical obligation to your insurance company is to follow correct procedures and to avoid insurance fraud. Taking advantage of the gift card program for “best practices” is the correct procedure, so you are right to obtain the benefit from it.

Insurance companies benefit by spending less money on preventable costs, and it is totally normal for them to pass some of those savings along to their customers. Sometimes this is done through lower premiums, and sometimes it’s through things like gift cards. Lower premiums are preferable, but gift cards are acceptable too. Your husband is probably senile.

Question:

I am a physician practicing in a state where marijuana is legal, both medicinally and recreationally. I will occasionally receive a bottle of wine from a patient as a token of gratitude. Recently, I was offered some marijuana by a patient for this reason. I did not accept, but would it have been wrong if I had?

Correct answer:

Morally, there is no difference between alcohol and cannabis. If there were a moral difference, cannabis would be less morally problematic than alcohol, because it is less harmful to one’s health.

Ethically, I do wonder about doctors accepting gifts from patients, but if the relevant professional bodies don’t have a problem with doctors accepting gifts of alcohol, I can not see any reason for them not to accept gifts of cannabis.

Should I Keep Working for a Raging Bigot?

Question:

I am a graduate student…. I have a job as an assistant…. It is just the two of us, and he pays me very well, allows me to work the hours I want, gives me a good deal of responsibility and is willing to give me in-depth training. He is, however, racist, homophobic, transphobic, bigoted and sexist. I am very liberal and find his ideas on many subjects to be repugnant. Though I have asked that he not talk about politics when we are together, he still does so from time to time. I often just let him speak and barely engage … I feel guilty …

Correct answer:

You describe your views as “very liberal,” which is to say that they are what’s fashionable today. If you are a graduate student now, you are probably in your early to mid 20s, which means you were probably born in the 1990s, which means you probably don’t remember a time when what’s now considered “racist, homophobic, transphobic, bigoted and sexist,” was fashionable. Fashions change, but your boss’s opinions haven’t changed with the fashions, and this has caused cognitive dissonance for you.

Because you are probably young, you probably have not yet had the opportunity to observe how quickly and how (apparently) senselessly fashions evolve, or can be made to evolve; consequently, you probably have never experienced your boss’s cognitive dissonance at being described as a “raging bigot” for having beliefs that were well within the norm when he was your age.

Quitting your cushy job because you can’t bear the physical proximity of someone whose beliefs are wrong and obnoxious is certainly one way to deal with your situation, but before taking this approach, you should carefully consider two other questions:

• First, of all the beliefs that you do not share, which are you willing to tolerate and which do you find intolerable? Are you willing to interrogate all of your close friends and family members to determine whether they hold any beliefs on your black list, and proceed to block them out of your life? How supportive and loving would, say, your elderly grandparents need to be in order for them to be exempted from the horrible consequences of your graduate school Inquisition?
• Second, how will you feel in the future when fashions inevitably change, turning your own beliefs into what graduate students consider to be raging bigotry? How frequently are you willing to change what you believe – every decade, every election cycle, every season? Is there anything that you believe so firmly that you will never change your mind about it? If business opportunities are denied to you in the future because nobody will agree to work in the presence of a raging bigot like you, to whom will you turn for financial support?

Here is an important lesson: when you arrive at work, you are arriving to work. Don’t engage in political discussions with your boss. Don’t encourage him to discuss politics with you under any circumstances. Don’t let yourself be drawn into anything controversial.

Here’s another important lesson: it’s helpful to forget the terms “racist,” “homophobic,” “transphobic,” “bigoted” and “sexist.” They aren’t very descriptive, obscure more than they reveal, and are subject to definitions that shift so rapidly that they can hardly be committed to print. As someone preparing for a career working with rare books and manuscripts, you should nurture an appreciation of the timeless and the sublime, rather than the transitory and the fashionable.

Question:

My boyfriend is a great person … He could be the one…. he made me promise not to talk to my ex-boyfriend and said that if I did, it would be the end of us as a couple…. When my current boyfriend made me promise not to talk to my ex, I accepted, and my ex did, too, and wished me luck…. I reconnected with him, without remembering my promise to my boyfriend….. It has now started to bother me that I’ve been lying to my boyfriend… I believe he will eventually soften up, but he has not. What is the right thing to do?

Correct answer:

There’s bad news and good news. The bad news is that your boyfriend is not “the one,” and the good news is that your boyfriend is not “the one.”

As someone who doesn’t do the jealousy thing, I don’t quite entirely understand when other people do it, but it seems like it’s being done to you now. Your choice, then, is not whether your boyfriend is going to be jealous or not, but whether you’re going to comply and enable his jealousy thing or not.

I recommend the following test to determine where your boyfriend’s limits really are: invite your ex-boyfriend, along with anyone he may be dating, to share a meal with you and your boyfriend. If your boyfriend will not allow you to eat and speak with your ex-boyfriend even in that sort of setting, then his opposition really is absolute, and I recommend that you break up with him immediately, without waiting to find out how many other people he wants to cut out of your life.