On Sunday I was driving three of my grandchildren home, and the youngest suggested that we play a game that they had often played on long, boring drives. The rules of the game seemed simple. Select a specific paint job for a car, i.e., navy blue, beige, grey, etc., and when you see a car with that particular color, you’re out. Kind of a last person standing theme. When my choice was made, they suggested that I change it to a color that would be more obscure so that I could last longer. They selected, for example, periwinkle, pink, and yellow. So, with that in mind, I selected mint green, and was knocked out within a few minutes. When my oldest granddaughter was eliminated, she contested the decision because the car that had her color was parked–an arbitrary rule change.
As the game progressed, the rules changed quickly and fervently. “No, Poppa, that car was lime green, not mint green,” one said. “That brown was not the brown that I meant,” said another. And on it went as we drove back to their home. It was during this trip that it dawned on me that this pattern of game changing has played a huge part in my adult life. Just when I thought I was playing by the rules, they changed dramatically.
For example, after having been insured for about 20 years by the same company, our basement flooded. When we made a claim, they very cautiously explained that we indeed had flood insurance, but we didn’t have drain backup insurance, and the water had rushed into the basement because the drain was backed up. (They had also discovered that if you didn’t pay claims, their stock holders would make more money.)
How about the greencard-holding immigrants who are encouraged to join the military and fight for our country because they can become citizens? Then, after they get out, they find out that they are indeed not citizens, and the path to get there is just as arduous as before, and then they are deported. This represents the not-so-fine print of life.
I remember that in philosophy class we learned about something called relative ethics. We were taught about a very flexible way of looking at life in which the ethical decisions depend on the particular circumstances. In other words, it was a very real example of the wiggle, or the weasel, theory. Time after time we hear our politicians carefully select each word as they position themselves to weasel out of whatever they are promising. The Cambridge dictionary says that to weasel out is to ?avoid doing something that you have ?agreed to do, ?especially by being ?dishonest. But then, that’s all relative.
My very favorite examples are those disclaimers that the drug companies are forced by the FDA to post in their advertisements for their cure-all drugs. They’ll start out by saying, “This drug will help you lose weight, give you a tan, and make you sexy.” Then the disclaimer: “This drug may cause your eyebrows to fall out, your skin to turn orange, and your heart to stop forever. Contact your doctor if you fingernails turn black, you hear fire engine sirens in your ears all night long, and your teeth begin to have a fluorescent glow.”
It’s sad that we have become so used to being deceived on so many levels. Used car salesmen sometimes take a bad rap for this behavior, but several movies this year have portrayed the real villains and criminals in our lives: “The Big Short,” which is about the greed of Wall Street, big government, and too-big-to-fail banks, and “Spotlight,” about the Archdiocese of Boston. These are examples of relative ethics. “It’s just the way things were.”
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