[dtrainor]

Originally Posted by disney_mommy

Okay, there is a whole lot here, so I'm going to break it up and respond to one opinion at a time:



I may be wrong here, but I don't think the OP was thinking about sleeping or feeling better, s/he was asking what was the right thing. The right thing is to do what can be done to return the Kindle to it's owner.




I resent the fact that you're saying that I would keep it if something similar were to happen to me. I absolutely would not. If it doesn't belong to me, then I have no interest inkeeping it. Whether someone steals something or finds it, it belongs to someone else and is therefore not mine to keep. As far as I'm concerned there is only 1 option in this case, and that is to try to return it to it's owner.




"Finders keepers, losers weepers" is something second graders say to each other when they find a crayon that another child wants or see a toy another has set down. As they grow up, they are properly taught that that is not true. It is not something that grown adults say to each other over stolen cars and lost Kindles. If that is how you and your friends value each other's posessions, I am glad I do not socialize with you.




Perhaps that is karma at work...




Maybe it was a chance to test the finder of the Kindle. Maybe it was a chance for the loser to meet someone in the process of reporting it. Maybe it was meant that the finder would meet someone in trying to return it. Maybe the loser wasn't meant to have it at all. Who are we to try to figure out the reasons?




What expense has s/he incurred? Is making a few phone calls not worth the effort of returning something that someone is surely missing?




S/he would not be "losing it." S/he would be returning it to its owner.




That is no surprise, considering the company you keep.




Let's forget for a moment about Karma, which you are obviously not a big fan of, yet spent an inordinate amount of time pontificating on, and concentrate on right and wrong. There is no entitlement or giving or receiving. It's simply the right, honest thing to do. Why does it matter whether you will be recieving a huge karmic payback sometime in the future?




How do you know it doesn't pay off? Maybe everything in your life that's good you owe to karma. Maybe karma is a myth somebody made up that only suckers believe in. Whatever the case may be, there is right and wrong. That's the bottom line.




Since when is doing the right thing something somebody has to force himself to do? Perhaps knowing they did the right thing is somebody's karma. Perhaps not getting hit by a car on the way home from work is somebody's karma. Perhaps the fact that you didn't get struck by lightening today on the golf course was karma at work. Perhaps the fact that a wife makes dinner for her husband tonight is his karma for doing the right thing today. How do we know what karma is? You seem to think it involves flashing neon lights and big payouts that leave no doubt as to their intent. Maybe that's not what it is.

I'm sorry you didn't receive a huge sum of money or a nice big kiss as reward for returning a lost item to its owner. I'm sure if the owner knew you were expecting "gratification," he would have surely done much more to thank you. And since when is not receiving gratification punishment? Sounds like you were greedily expecting something simply for doing the right thing and you were disappointed. Boo hoo. Poor you.




If the person that found the Kindle returned it to Amazon, two owners would not lose out. Only the owner of the Kindle would (and that's assuming Amazon simply chucks the Kindle in the trash). The person who returned it did not own the Kindle, so would not lose out. And I can pretty much guarantee that anyone who has ever had anything returned to them is appreciative. They might not offer you a big sum of money or a handjob as thanks, but they are thankful.




They are surely more protective and aware of what they are doing now that they have lost something, but returning it to them does not ensure that they will become complacent with their belongings. That's quite a leap to make. It is not our job to teach lessons to strangers about losing their belongings, nor is it our job to attempt to divvy up karma as we see fit.


I don't recall the last time a post has made me so up in arms, so forgive the length of this post. I'm sure the intent was to incite someone's emotions, and in that case it succeeded. To quote kindlekitten - welcome to the forums.

A recurring trend throughout your post was making personal assumptions upon my character. I was arguing as devil's advocate regarding the ethics of the issue; most of what I mentioned in my own post was fictitious. I don't even lose things often, I was just putting myself in the position of someone who does. Your comments regarding the "company I keep" were out of line, as now you're assuming what sort of friends I have. Don't worry yourself over such frivolities; someone with a rear end as uptight as yours wouldn't make the list.

I notice you dodged the issue of ethics altogether and expected me to break down my post one reply at a time. The tedium of this exercise exceeds the ambition I have to approach it. My post was to illustrate that karma can not be dictated from the subjective opinions of those already predisposed to favoring one response or another; to simplify: that karma will always look differently from one perspective than it does from another.

Your smarmy introduction to the boards gave me the sort of information I was looking for regarding the company I'd prefer not to keep in the future. I see now I'll never break into this little cult and earn the acceptance of some aging Kindle users who spend time on the boards in between what can only be assumed is a passive approach to parenting; you could have raised your children more efficiently in the time it took you to parrot the sentiments of another almost verbatim. You can avoid having personal judgments like this made about you by showing others the same courtesy; I read somewhere about learning all that in 2nd grade. I guess there are things you didn't learn that year, either.

Not receiving gratification is of course punishment because it proves a fruitless endeavor. Alas, we've more proverbs: no good deed goes unpunished, and playing devil's advocate on these boards for the sake of exposing liars didn't do me any favors either. The fact that you thought I singled you out in my post when, quite frankly, I didn't know you existed until five minutes ago, tells me I must have struck a nerve. I'll let the cult following you've acquired here nurse any wounds that may have ensued as a result, because I can no longer care any less what you think about just about anything.