No law is as brutal as my conscience. If something is illegal, yet I don’t feel remorsen for it (like with pirating), I don’t give a damn and keep doing it. But if I feel guilty about something that is not only not illegal, but even encouraged, no matter what, I NEVER do it again.
P00ptart@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Exactly. I feel bad about shit from 30+ years ago. I stole a sucker when I was like 5 or 6, and that part was easy. Enjoying it was not. It was a sucker. Like $.25 at the time or something. But it wasn’t about the money, it was that I did a wrong thing and haven’t stolen anything since. Pirating feels different since it’s not a physical object. Also, if one pirates stuff that’s good enough, I’m likely to buy.
Another thing was when I was like 7 or 8, we were in PE and running sprints and I pretended to be so worn out I was about to collapse, and pantsed a kid. I didn’t even dislike the him. I honestly didn’t know why I did it. I just did something wrong and I feel way more bad about it than the offense itself. I wish I could apologize to him but don’t remember his last name, and I feel like I wouldn’t deserve being let off the hook anyway.
This moral auditing is what makes me a much better person today. Unfortunately not everybody has a moral auditing department in them.