[ukpsanna] Stop snitching Koan

"If you see, or otherwise find out about, a friend doing something illegal, are you morally obligated to report him or her to authorities?"

This is actually a zen koan.  The point of the question is not the answer, but to cause you to think about the much larger issues surrounding the question.

The initial obvious answer is yes, encouraging a lawful and orderly society, which is good.

But a valid counterpoint is "no", because friends should be able to trust one another, and trust relationships are very important for society: they are the very definition of society.

The real answer is, "Why are you asking this question so frequently?"

If you are asking this question often, then something is wrong with society.  It should be a sufficiently rare occurrence that spending time thinking about it should feel like wasting time thinking about what to do if lightning strikes two meteors colliding in mid-air above your head.

But it isn't a rare question, and that's a problem.  We have laws that are at odds with the way normal behave if they can do it covertly, or among friends they think they can trust.

Someone, possibly with good intentions, is attempting to change society without changing how people actually think, and in so doing, has rended the trust relationships between people, causing more harm than good.

Inspired by a related issue: legally required snitching, where you are legally obligated to report illegal behavior you know about, or else you face criminal prosecution yourself.

If you prevent people from trusting each other, you can prevent people from organizing to subvert your power.  The key to fascism is to not let people talk.