Feeling Superior

For connoisseurs of the monkey mind out there, I caught mine engaged in an interestingly shifty mental-cum-moral manoeuvre earlier this evening. This was in relation to the unfortunate Charlie Sheen, a celebrity who's in the process of messing up his life in full public view. I happened to catch the last five minutes of a piece on his case on one of the news channels. Actually it wasn't so much about him as about the morality of allowing, nay encouraging him to screw up so spectacularly on air, as it seems he is doing. (I haven't seen any of this, and I don't want to, but his story has featured enough in the papers over here for me to know the broad outlines thereof.)

The programme made the dilemma quite clear: there's an impeccable logic to allowing this sort of thing (a celebrity painfully going to pieces in full view, as it were) to happen, but those involved are not behaving with any sense of decency at all. And that's about as far as you can go, other than to feel, as I did, morally superior for not wanting to watch or get involved in any of this.

At that point I got involved in a little thought experiment. Let's say I had a particularly compromising photo of the actor and could sell this to a newspaper. At what point would I be tempted to actually do the dirty deed? I got to the answer quite quickly. Not a thousand. Not ten thousand. But as soon as the money became 'life-changing' I knew I was more than likely to bite. I reckon two hundred thousand might well do it - especially after a bad day at work.

Now here's the point. In the middle of all this I was still managing to feel morally superior. Here's how it went: not being tempted by relatively small amounts was proof that I wasn't greedy as such amounts involved greed. Larger amounts went beyond greed into new territory - a fine concern with one's actual quality of life - and such temptation was, thus, quite laudable really. I know this utterly specious reasoning is daft, but I equally know that something suspiciously like it was in my mind.

So it's quite simple really. If I have my price, and I rather suspect I have (though I hope I don't) I'd better get off my high horse and onto the same low one that your average gossip columnist rides on. Meantime I'd better pray that temptation doesn't come my way.