Clever Name TBD

I was at Max & Angela's house today, and we were watching Bowling for Columbine. This is a movie we've all meant to see forever but for some reason hadn't. It's interesting to consider how much fear is inserted into the collective psyche of America and why, and the film explores thing in a variety of ways.

One of the less dramatic topics Moore brings up in the film is that folks in Canada (Toronto, specifically), don't seem to lock their doors. Angela found that bizarre, and I found it bizarre that she found it bizarre.

I grew up in U.S. Air Force bases for a good portion of my childhood, and for a long time we never locked the door at home, nor did we lock the car at the store. I found it surprising when my Dad first pointed out that I should lock the door; we were no longer living on base, and he started locking up.

When I lived in L.A. (Burbank / Toluca Lake), I often left my door unlocked, and for the several years that I lived in San Jose, I never locked the doors to my house, except the front door. You could go in through the garage by pulling the door open, or through the back door. I never used my keys, and my friends could get it when they beat me home. (In my current house, however, the garage door is electric, and the front door is locked, so there is no convenient way in without a key; though I have scant faith in the ability of a locked door to keep the dishonest out.)

Anyway, this got me thinking about why the different mindsets… My theory is that in a society where one is not expected to be honest, some find unlocked doors to be an opportunity to take advantage of a sucker, whereas when one is expected to be honest, an unlocked door is a normal thing and not a source of temptation.

This isn't to say that dishonest people are going to walk away from an unlocked door in either scenario, but, as I mentioned earlier, I don't think they will walk away from a locked door either. I do think that a borderline honest person (one who "needs to be kept honest") is more likely to behave honestly in a situation when they feel they are trusted. That is, I think the borderline fellow is the one who will find the unexpected unlocked door to be tempting, and the expected unlocked door less so.

There is a fruit stand on Highway 1, out by Santa Cruz, which is open daily. It is not staffed. Instead, there is a sign with the price of the fruit, and a box to drop money into. You take your fruit and drop in some cash. I would bet, and this may be an interesting social experiment, that if they put up a camera, and signs that say "you're under surveillance" and maybe a monitor to show you that the camera is watching you, that if there were a part of the fruit stand not covered by the camera, people would be more prone to stealing from the unprotected section of the stand and the theft rate would be higher overall.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think it's that Santa Cruz fruit stand shoppers are inherently more honest than most. I think it's about expectations.