Just Rewards: Banking On It?
If you do the right thing, should you expect to be rewarded?
Yes, say three men in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The men—all city-employed water department workers—were on the job when they discovered an abandoned safe at the side of a road. The safe had been stolen by robbers who broke through the wall of a local bank during a winter ice storm.
Inside was $11,000, credit cards, several bags of blank traveler’s checks, some presumably valuable watches, and bank records.
The three workers notified authorities of their find, and the stolen safe was returned to the bank.
But the story didn’t end there. Two of the three workers told the local newspaper they felt they hadn’t been properly thanked—by the city or the bank—and suggested that virtue might not be its own reward.
“We did the right thing,” said the 62-year-old supervisor of the group. “No one even knew that we were out there, and we (still) kept the money secure.”
Another of the men said, “We did the right thing, but are the other people doing the right thing? That’s my question to the bank.”
In response, the bank manager and the mayor offered thanks, but newspaper readers offered criticism. In a letter to the editor, one wondered, “Would they have not done it if they had known they wouldn’t get the proper praise or reward?” Another reader wrote, “They did the right thing. But do we have to be rewarded for doing the right thing?”
Tell us what you think: Should the men have been financially rewarded by the bank? If you found valuable property belonging to a bank or other company, but you knew in advance you wouldn’t be rewarded for its return, would that change the way you dealt with your find?
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Yes, thank them!!
You should bloody well thank them!! If your bank records were found in a safe, and you found out that someone had turned them in without doing anything with them, wouldn’t you want to properly thank them? Of course you would!! The fact that this bank didn’t just goes to show that the good side never gets rewarded for it’s kindness, the bad side steals the rewards. At least give them something, like $500. If I found a safe on the side of the road, of course I’d turn it in. But I would still be cross if I found out that the bank that which it came from wasn’t exactly going to thank me for returning it.
Average Person | 1 year, 4 months ago
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The Three Guys Are Crazy
OK, maybe they’re not crazy, but two thoughts:
First, to the average person, I think you’re conflating two issues: whether or not the bank should, practically speaking, give those individuals a reward, in order to encourage others to do the right thing; and whether or not the people who brought the safe back should expect or demand some kind of compensation.
To the second issue, I think the answer is clearly no — they should not expect the reward. The valuables in the safe did not belong to any of them, and they were in fact obligated to return what they found; no one is automatically entitled to a financial gain for doing something he/she was obligated to do anyway.
—TMG
The Moral Guy | 1 year, 4 months ago
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True, but....
It’s not even about that. They didn’t even get a written thank you until they complained about it. That’s just sad.
Average Person | 1 year, 4 months ago
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Understanding Karma
The word karma is actually little understood. It means action from the Sanskrit root kri- to do. Performing a good action will in the long run reap goodness for us. Performing a bad action will in the long term result in a similar form of bad action being reaped by us.
It is a long term big picture relationship.We all know of people who have helped others only to be walked over, taken advantage of and spit upon. We can’t and shouldn’t expect and expect an immediate reward. If that were the case then we are trained dogs and not humans beings.
In fact, we know now through neuro -scientific evidence that when we are generous the same brain circuits are activated as when we receive a gift. Ergo our good action is it’s own reward. All we have to do is recognize it.
The Bhagavad Gita a famous Indian scripture states “ You are entitled to the action, but not the fruit of the action.”
Great scientists made their discoveries by noticing the results of experiments gone bad. It led them to the next step. that was how penicillin was developed and the effects of nitric oxide which led to the development of Viagra.
Our rewards come from knowing we did the right thing whether others recognize it or not. If more and more people did the right thing just for the sake of being a good human being what a good world we would have.
Jan Newman MD | 1 year, 4 months ago
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Karma's just not true
Maybe that’s too provocative of a title, but still, Jan Newman (MD!) wrote: “Performing a good action will in the long run reap goodness for us” and then gave some medicine-related examples where that happened.
Of course there are times when good people reap goodness, and bad people reap something less good, but it’s flat-out wrong to say that always happens. The fact is that many times good people undeservedly suffer, even in the long run, while people who have done bad profit from their acts.
And anyway, I believe (and I think most people do, too) that we shouldn’t do good things just because we believe we’ll get some reward, whether it’s financial, spiritual, psychological, whatever. We should do it for no other reason than that it’s the right thing to do.
-TMG
The Moral Guy | 1 year, 4 months ago
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Karma is true
1.) I specifically said that we are entitled to our actions not the fruit of those actions. ergo The actions are not performed FOR reward, any reward whether now or in the future, physiological, material or spiritual. Rewards or positive things occur as byproducts and unequivocally are not what is sought after. I do not believe that you carefully read my post.
2.) What karma tells us is that “long run” can mean thousands of lifetimes. So the suffering we are experiencing now can be due to negative actions we performed lifetimes ago.
3)In answer to a previous post, yes we are to transcend karma, but that doesn’t happen by a “spiritual bypass” where we apply situational ethics. Transcending karma requires a solid ethical foundation and then reaching a level of experience of interconnectedness of all things with great compassion. Therefore we would realize that we could be the man laying in the street, the woman driving by and even the hoodlums and therefore would be far more reluctant to pass judgment on the Samaritan.
4.) The 2 examples which were given were specific examples of how beneficial events can happen when we are NOT attached to the results of our actions. Had Fleming been attached to the results of his actions he would have thrown out his petri dishes of bacteria as his experiment had been contaminated. Instead of getting upset, he looked at what had happened and notice that the mold had inhibited bacterial growth and then discovered penicillin.
Furchgott’s assistant made a lab error, if Furchgott was attached to the results, then he would have yelled at the lab assistant for screwing up. Instead he studied what happened and realized that the endothelium was involved, The results brought him the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Jan Newman MD | 1 year, 4 months ago
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Not true
The world is not a karmic justice generating machine. If you need to think it works that way to remain calm in an often unfair and unjust world, fine. But evolution means we are moving from delusional thinking patterns to higher level cognitive processes and I hate to see your thoughts on karma (an ancient way of keeping people on the moral path) put forth as fact and encourage more delusional thinking in others. There is no correlation between an act we do today and what befalls us down the road. That’s tribal thinking from times past. Seeing how Viagra and NO are related has nothing to do with karma. Mold becoming penicillin likewise is simply observation in action and using that information. It isn’t karma.
Ann | 1 year, 4 months ago
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I agree
Children are taught that they should always do the right thing no matter if they get rewarded for it or not. Why does this change as they grow into adulthood? Many people nowadays are so concerned with material rewards that they have forgotten the pride and the virtue of doing a good deed for others. It is a nice feeling when we are rewarded for doing the right thing but it should never be expected.
Kati C. | 1 year, 4 months ago
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Why?
Why should someone expect to be rewarded for a good deed? If everyone was rewarded for every good thing they did, the only incentive would be the reward; instead, the incentive should be helping to make the world a better place, as cliche as that sounds. I understand that people are sometimes compensated for their good deeds, for example, if someone loses a dog, they’ll post a sign with a reward for $10-$50 depending on how prized the dog is to the family. However, I still do not believe that these men should expect to be compensated for what should be considered a good deed. Asking for something in return takes away from the greatness, so to speak, of what you actually did. Maybe a thank you note wouldn’t be too much to ask for, but money definitely is.
This Is Me | 1 year, 4 months ago
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Just do the right thing...
If they had found your safe, you would want them to return it. A thank you would be nice, but for crying out loud, we shouldn’t expect it to be shouted from the rooftops when we do the right thing. Sure the bank should of thanked them. Not necessarily by giving them money, but at least by recognizing their actions to encourage virtue among others. The sad truth is that people don’t always think that way. And just because nobody else is going to thank us for doing good doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Someone has to be a good example, and true leaders, true heroes are those who do good with no thought of how they will be rewarded.
Tinkerbelle1978 | 1 year, 3 months ago
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