The ethics of a raven

 "It is in your own power to maintain the beauty of your soul, or to be a decent human being." - Marcus Aurelius

This is a further discussion on Sociology - a personal observation.  I once had a friend who had a pet raven.  The raven wasn't 'his', but it hung around his desert property, and they were pretty good friends.

The bird, whom he named Ollie, was highly intelligent.  Like many juvenile ravens, Ollie kept a small hoard of of shiny things that he had collected over time.  He gathered coins, foil bubble gum wrappers, beer can tabs, and a few other reflective bits of plastic and glass.

Ollie was very fond of dry dog kibble, so if you wanted to get better acquainted with him, you needed a few morsels to convince him that you were worth getting near.  I never really cared much for ravens until I met Ollie - I just thought of them as noisy nuisance birds.

Here's the thing:  Once you had provided Ollie with some treats, he would be willing to spend time with you - and then he would briefly disappear.  When he returned, he would bring you one of the prized items from his trove, to return your kindness with something that he valued.  And that's when I realized that Ollie had a sense of ethics and fairness.

Why this semi-wild bird had a better sense of fairness than the top 1% of human wealth-holders and large wealthy governments, I am at a loss to explain.  Perhaps he had developed a sense of empathy.  Children have it.

Is empathy and fairness now seen as a sign of weakness, naivety, or stupidity?  Is empathy a facet of our personality that should be exploited - by retailers, employers, or 'charities' with CEO's earning millions?  Is being a bully, scammer or liar what currently puts a person at advantage in society these days?  I'm unenthusiastic about investigating and answering those questions.  

I'll say this though:  If being the biggest bully is seen to be the appropriate initial reaction to events, World War 3 is not far off - and this is assuming WW3 hasn't already begun.

If I were to make an amateur psych diagnosis of our sad and troubled society, I'd probably come up with something like Narcissistic Personality Disorder, with a side order of abominable ethics.  Unfortunately, the decline seems to have progressed so far along that little can be done to halt the slide.  In the meantime, maybe those of us who don't seek power and authority should simply look at Ollie for an example of what ethical behavior looks like.

Postscript:

Unfortunately for Ollie, a neighbor shot him one day while he was making racket in a tree-top.  The gunshot broke his wing.  My extremely distraught friend took Ollie to the veterinarian, who set the bone and immobilized the wing.  In a few week's time the wing healed, and Ollie flew off, not to be seen again.  Ollie was, if nothing else, a quick learner.