Conscience

Someone takes your property right from under your nose and later denies it. Cuts queue and makes like he or she has done nothing wrong. Puts melamine in baby food knowing full well it destroys kidneys. We ask why.

Remember the movie Alien (1979)? You might recall this conversation:

Ripley: How do we kill it Ash? There's gotta be a way of killing it, how, *how* do we do it?
Ash: You can't.
Parker: That's bullshit.
Ash: You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Lambert: You admire it.
Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

That last line was the kicker to me. Ash the android describing purity as a state of being "unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."

As a trained programmer I can relate. A computer will do anything you program it to do. It is not hamstrung by tradition and opinion. It is not judgemental or indecisive. Look at the primitive mindless animal. 100% sharp teeth and survival instinct. It bothers with no pretensions of right and wrong.

Xen wrote a piece about PRCs (Mainland Chinese nationals) swarming over Singapore creating havoc. Housewives and cabbies swear they have no conscience, only one objective - to take what belongs to you, never mind that homes, families and fortunes are wrecked in the process. Ash would admire the ruthless "purity" of such single-mindedness.

Well, having met a few PRCs myself, I know that not all of them are like that but it did make me think. If you've ever rubbed someone the wrong way, you'd know that an adversary without conscience is the most formidable kind there is. In Alien, Ripley found that out the hard way. We too are finding out the hard way, this whole melamine episode being one.

People with no conscience don't recognize value systems. In a study of serial killers, it is thought that this is due to some neural dysfunction in the frontal lobe, the part of the brain that controls ethics, morals, manners and social responsibility. Damage can be caused by things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or a sharp blow to the head and can lead to nasty personal disorders like narcissism.

But the conscience-challenged often do understand one thing - punishment. So much so that if they avoid doing something bad, it is out of fear of being caught rather than an appreciation that their action is hurting others. So they'll tell you its okay to do whatever. Just don't get caught.

Sound familiar to you?

(Edit: I just discovered a Washington-based organization called CREW - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. Singapore might be able to use something similar. I wonder if they'll call it SCREW.)