Here are some media-sponsored tidbits to ponder:
The 19 al-Qaida hijackers who killed 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard United Flight 93 were evil, despicable people as well. They were hypocritical fundamentalists who twisted Islam into an outlet for their sociopathic tendencies.
Enron is a filthy, disgusting corporation that covered up poor financial results, manipulated information to inflate the stock portfolios of top executives, and callously betrayed their own employees and the trust of Wall Street.
Yet why does this particular suffering merit the disbursement of money to assuage the grief caused by evil? Already we see the fights over the Sept. 11 compensation fund as each family angles for the largest share of the pie. We also see victims of the Enron scandal appearing on national TV as objects of pity, having lost their entire retirement savings. The clear implication is that as victims of the largest corporate rear-ending the world has ever known, they are entitled to recover some of their losses.
As the 21st century takes shape, American society finds itself somehow giving celebrity status to certain deaths and certain losses and not to other deaths and losses. By our reckoning, the malevolent and spectacular nature of Kenneth Lay's deception and Mohammed Atta's suicidal tendencies are cause for special consideration. When one considers the facts of the matter, however, special consideration becomes ludicrous.
Ask anybody whether the family of a person who dies in a double murder has suffered a loss greater than the family of a person who dies in a single murder. The family's grief is the same. There is no "added" grief to the single loss that has been suffered simply because others died at the same time. Would the grief be the same if the victim simply tripped on the bathmat and hit his head on the toilet? Probably yes. Malice adds little to loss.
Ask anybody whether losing their life's savings means anything more to them if they flushed the dollar bills down the toilet, lost it at the craps tables in Vegas or were duped by a smooth talking CEO and a Byzantine balance sheet. The loss of life's savings is the same.
There is merit to considering the bad intentions of those who perpetrated losses. Bad intentions separate manslaughter from murder and incompetence from fraud. Yet these bad intentions reflect only on the perpetrators of loss, not on the victims of loss. When we link bad intentions to the possibility of compensation, we somehow inflate the effect of bad intentions themselves. Criminality creates loss in the pursuit of gains for the criminal; yet after the loss is accounted, it is no worse for the criminal intent. Kenneth Lay's theft of billions in shareholder value is horrible indeed but it reflects only on his criminal irresponsibility -- not on the thousands that he wronged.
I am not arguing for an amoral society in this column -- far from it, I hope that all of us have morals. Morals should not, however, be something decided by society and anyone else other than those who choose to hold them. I only argue for equality in loss. An Iraqi or Afghan child who dies from American military action should not be callously referred to as "collateral damage" on the network news while the victims of Sept. 11 receive hundreds of thousands of dollars for the exact same crime -- being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Discrimination in loss tears our society apart by giving financial rewards to those who indict the other as evil. What happened to simple bad luck?
As both individuals and members of society we should act to minimize loss on all counts. We should confront all aspects of our behavior and realistically assess not whether we satisfy our consciences by serving "good intentions" but actually do good for others. Did I leave the world a better place today? Or did I simply wish for it to be so? The effect -- and not the intentions -- is the measure of our actions each and every day of our lives.
