Obligations

The little orange 'Blogger' icon winks at me from my Favourites bar. Come on it says, haven't you got anything to say, just a teeny weeny bit of something you'd like to share? 

I'm too busy, I'm at work, I've only got five minutes, I can't think of anything interesting. I DID think of something but now I've forgotten it.  Hmmm.

I'm not going to apologise, because this is my page.  I can write on it or not, as I wish. I was going to say that one should never apologise for not doing something unless one is contractually obligated to do it, but then I realised that there are few things that we are contractually obligated to do.  Employment, paying the mortgage, all sorts of financial things, marriage perhaps (especially if you are the sort of person who likes a Pre-Nup) - but probably nothing you couldn't buy your way out of.

That then made me think that argument was weak, but is it?  Do we have to apologise for things that we haven't done, when nobody asked us to do it (or said we must) in the first place?  Surely we should only need to apologise for things we HAVE done, which we shouldn't have.  Or is there a moral obligation to do things, an unspoken code of society and when we break it by not doing something we are not obligated to do, we feel guilty and have to apologise. Especially if we are British.

Last night Mr H and I watched a video on Facebook which was a montage of clips of 'the general public' doing Good Deeds such as holding doors open for a blind person, picking up a toy that a child has thrown out of a pram, preventing someone stepping front of a car, or helping a bully victim up from the floor. In each clip there was a 3rd party wordlessly watching the Good Deed be done, we assumed that they were supposed to be thinking 'I could do that'.  I complained that it was depressing that people made such a big thing (ie. making a film and spreading it around the internet) about what to me seem basic courteous actions and attitudes.  Mr H, on the other hand said that it acted as a reminder to people just how easy it is to do simple things to help others out, things that are done on impulse in an instant and take no time or trouble out of your day.  I can see his point but I still mourn the fact that those actions are an exception rather than a rule, allegedly.

I say allegedly carefully, because we can be told that society is now rude, unsociable, unfriendly and uncaring, but is that actually the case?  or is actually the norm to not slam a door in someone's face, or to help someone push their broken down car off the road, but the internet and the media think it is better to paint a grim picture of near Armageddon where no-one cares about anyone else, and we're all going to hell in a hand-cart?

Are people actually regularly complying with their moral obligations more than we are led to believe?