27. Duties Done

Synopsis - Four kids on a round-the-world holiday tell Mom they'd write home. All four do but none of their letters reach home. Have they fulfilled their moral obligations?

Nice names. I was looking for some kind of code in Hew, Drew, Sue and Lou.

Anyways, Baggini explains that the story of simple letter writing and non-receipt has greater implications to bigger moral issues. Kinda freaky but the extrapolation is valid.

All four kids made attempts to communicate with their mother and through no or little fault of their own, no letter made it to mom. Their intention though genuine, sincere and manifested, the intended outcome did not materialise. Is this a question of responsibility? All four kid did as required of them. So in their minds, it's a non-issue. "Yeah Mom, I wrote. What nothing came through? Shucks"

It sounds a little like politics. When it's time for elections, politicians may promise the Earth and when it comes to deliver, no one really knows what happened down the line. "Yeah, I promise to clean up the streets." and months later, "I blame the police for not seeing this through." (Sorry, I am generalising. Too much Law & Order).

The example Baggini brought up was about calling off a nuke attack. Ok, that is a very big difference. The Chief of the Nuke Forces better listen to the President then and execute orders immediately, dammit. So follow through, is that what we should be concerned about? Expectations of performance come into play. I was a Project Manager in a digital agency for 3 years and it that time, I understood what it means to see things through all the way to the end. Yes, you need to trust everyone you work with to do their job but my job was to question and check every step of the way. Just like Hew, Drew and Lou trusted different sets of people down the 'postal line' to facilitate the transfer of each letter, we all have to trust that people do their job too. Especially managers and bosses. Else nothing would work. Society would fumble back to cavemen times.

If something didn't work, who's fault would it be? As a PM I would look at the problem in steps - who did what, who didn't do what, what did happen, what didn't happen what didn't the PM do. That's all logical and clinical. Hew could go confront his friends. Lou could go see someone in the post office.

But we all have expectations, appropriately measured, for all aspects of our interactions. The kids had to rely on the postal service to fulfill their moral duty. Maybe they would or wouldn't expect the letters to get delivered because of past experiences. In Singapore, the postal service guarantees local mail arrives the next day unless there's a problem. Most Singaporeans have come to have this expectation of service too. I have to trust the eggs are fresh when I buy them at the market because I wouldn't know if they are. My moral duty ends when I had the money over, I think.

This is also why Fedex, UPS and DHL make a lot of money. Trust them to get things delivered.