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The good thing about faith in mankind is that one simply takes one's erring fellow citizens' word for it when they cry out that they hadn't realised, as the following straightforward example illustrates. Just when you're thinking that the coast is clear, I make you wonder whether covering up nasty intentions isn't something that should in fact be punished. You remonstrate that there's no proof, and I suggest that we reverse the mechanism, so that in so far as a citizen's conduct fails to demonstrate that he is making a positive contribution to the prevention of unpleasantness, he (or she) is tacitly guilty of committing an offence. Although this is not the same as my initial proposition, I would suggest that while we remain unable to read our fellow men and women's minds but feel all the same that we should selflessly participate in the advancement of society, we should transform this characteristic not-my-problem attitude that rides on the coat-tails of the benefit of the doubt into the sort of attitude that by the time the detection gates at the airport will be able to read our minds will do wonders for our poise, so that we don't have to wonder out of insecurity whether the equipment has cottoned on to the fact that there are other moods besides a criminal frame of mind (have you never been in love, for example?) that tend to upset a person's pancreatic temperature. You are a most upstanding person, I'm sure, but just to be on the safe side, you should from now on perform a positive act whenever you pass through a detection gate - nothing involving mallets or chainsaws, mind you, but let's say you surreptitiously smudge the coat of the lady next to you, then elaborately and obligingly remove the stain. You're absolutely right that this is straight out of the pickpocket's book of tricks, but what I have achieved in just over 20 lines is that it is now being used to achieve something positive, and is that promising or what? |