Friday, March 10, 2006
What's Wrong With This Picture?
Well-behaved teenagers are to be rewarded with a so-called "good behaviour card" to spend on sport and leisure, under plans being unveiled.So, the proposal in the UK is to PAY children for behaving? We're not talking extraordinarily good behavior here, we are just talking about "staying out of trouble."
Chancellor Gordon Brown wants to give 13-19 year-olds up to £25 a month to keep them "off the streets", as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour.
So, where does this end? Should the government pay me for getting a job, instead of living on the dole? No, you say? OK, so what happens when I am past the age of eligibility, do I get to start mis-behaving? Well? Why should I behave at 21 when I am not getting paid to do so?
To me the bottom line question is this - what's wrong with a society wherein reasonable behavior is not its own reward? Either the society no longer values decency enough to have built in, non-monetary incentives, or it has decided that money is the only thing of any value at all and therefore the only acceptable incentive. Not a pretty picture, is it.
What really, really bothers me is that in either case, we are completely dehumanized for we have reduced our own humanity, as measured by our reasonable behavior, to money.
I hope this idea fails, and fails miserably.
Related Tags: good behavior, payment, humanity, values
