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penfield"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain
On my way to work this morning, I passed through the Pentagon Row plaza and saw a plastic water bottle sitting next to a large shrubbery planter. My guess is that some citizen, perhaps resting after a workout or simply enjoying their own homestyle beverage, was socializing in that spot yesterday and inadvertently left it there.
First, I wondered if it was worth stealing for myself. I decided it was not.
Then, I wondered if the owner would come back to this spot to try and reclaim it. It seemed unlikely that the item would last that long before being tidied away by a passerby less discriminating than myself.
And finally I wondered if there was some kind of lost-and-found for the area. While the Pentagon Row Plaza is a minor hub of social activity for all ages, it is merely a loose federation of shops and restaurants without any central governance. Even if there were a lost-and-found, its location would not be immediately obvious to the average loser.
Intuitively, the whole concept of a Lost-and-Found seems like proof of a "good" society, not just because it facilitates the reunion of individuals and their rightful property, but also because it relies on the conscientious nature of the "finder" to turn the item in rather than keep it for themselves.
But I see the flipside: in a truly good-natured society, the average person could be counted on to refrain from picking the item up and keeping it for themselves, and the owner of the lost item could simply return to the place they left it and it would still be there waiting to be reclaimed. In the real world, "finders-keepers, losers-weepers" is the law of the land, and the Lost-and-Found is an convention artificially imposed on us to maintain order. So the Lost-and-Found is actually evidence of (and a resistor for) humanity's opportunistic, avaricious, scavenging impulses.
Have a great day, everybody!
- Mark Twain
On my way to work this morning, I passed through the Pentagon Row plaza and saw a plastic water bottle sitting next to a large shrubbery planter. My guess is that some citizen, perhaps resting after a workout or simply enjoying their own homestyle beverage, was socializing in that spot yesterday and inadvertently left it there.
First, I wondered if it was worth stealing for myself. I decided it was not.
Then, I wondered if the owner would come back to this spot to try and reclaim it. It seemed unlikely that the item would last that long before being tidied away by a passerby less discriminating than myself.
And finally I wondered if there was some kind of lost-and-found for the area. While the Pentagon Row Plaza is a minor hub of social activity for all ages, it is merely a loose federation of shops and restaurants without any central governance. Even if there were a lost-and-found, its location would not be immediately obvious to the average loser.
Intuitively, the whole concept of a Lost-and-Found seems like proof of a "good" society, not just because it facilitates the reunion of individuals and their rightful property, but also because it relies on the conscientious nature of the "finder" to turn the item in rather than keep it for themselves.
But I see the flipside: in a truly good-natured society, the average person could be counted on to refrain from picking the item up and keeping it for themselves, and the owner of the lost item could simply return to the place they left it and it would still be there waiting to be reclaimed. In the real world, "finders-keepers, losers-weepers" is the law of the land, and the Lost-and-Found is an convention artificially imposed on us to maintain order. So the Lost-and-Found is actually evidence of (and a resistor for) humanity's opportunistic, avaricious, scavenging impulses.
Have a great day, everybody!
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You Lost Me
Date: 2008-04-30 01:33 am (UTC)You also overlook the characteristic of Lost-and-Founds that mimics the "take-a-penny-leave-a-penny" cup at a deli cash register. This mostly applies to reading glasses and umbrellas. But here's another story to demonstrate a different kind of utility for the L&F:
When I was on my sixth grade trip to New York City, I inadvertently dropped a roll of film which subsequently became "lost." I didn't realize that I had lost the film until I got home and noticed it missing. Where had it gone? Did I lose it on the bus? Did I lose it at the South Street Seaport? Did someone pick my pocket hoping to steal my nylon-velcro wallet only to snag a roll of 35mm film? I surely couldn't go all the way back to New York City to look for it. So this whereabout of my missing class trip photos would be a mystery for all time. Until...
Several weeks later I received a thick envelope in the mail, send to me (my first name only) at my elementary school's address. It turns out that someone else had also lost a roll of film that very same day at the Statue of Liberty. So they went to the L&F and claimed the only roll of film turned in that afternoon.
This good samaritan took the roll of film to get developed only to realize that the pictures weren't theirs. How disappointed they must have been. But they put aside their own personal anguish and sought to find the rightful owner of these pictures. So from minute details in the photos -- my nameplate affixed to my bedroom door in the background of one photo and a sign for my elementary school partially captured in another frame -- this kind person figured out how to send the photos to its the proper place. They didn't even ask for money to cover the film processing.
Re: You Lost Me
Date: 2008-04-30 07:31 pm (UTC)A Testimonial
Date: 2008-05-01 01:51 am (UTC)25 years
and all that time
I have dropped things.
I've dropped
tissues,
letters from women
in Santa Fe, N.M.,
money,
the keys to my house,
books by
Jacques Prevert.
And all this time,
you,
the people of this
city, have pointed
to me, and said,
"Hey!" "Sir!" "You!
You dropped something!"
and then I've picked it up.
You have watched
over me all these
years,
and I've waited till
now to thank you.