sleepyvinny said:
Nando said:
It would be foolish to commit such a disgraceful act and not cover your tracks.
it never ceases to amaze me how one's hidden intentions are always betrayed by one's choice of words! ;)
I think I know what you meant ("Nando is implying that a coverup, being expected, is somehow 'good'. Considering a cover-up 'good' is 'bad'.), but I have to say that this particular quote, (admittedly taken out of context), makes some inherent sense.
You seem to be implying that one should have a 'moral' decision making process, i.e. if you commit a disgraceful act, you should be ashamed and be seeking atonement, therefore you should accept responsibility and take your deserved punishment. However if you remove the 'morality' directive, you get simply stimulus-response. If someone does something that they perceive to be disgraceful, it would be natural to desire to cover it up. So it
would be "foolish" if the goal was to avoid consequences or punishment.
Ironically, the fact that an individual would characterize their actions as a "disgraceful act" implies to me that this individual has some kind of moral center, otherwise they would not feel shame. In this case the only issue is the willingness to accept (and even embrace) consequences. Like a 5-year old boy who is found standing in the kitchen holding a cookie, surrounded by the shattered remains of an heirloom cookie jar, he wants to avoid "getting spanked". From the point of view of the little boy, any other stance than denial is foolish because acceptance brings certain punishment. (Like happens even with adults, the denial is often even more foolish. I have a 5-year old and it sometimes almost makes me laugh at his ridiculous attempts at denial. He refuses to grok that denial is actually counter-productive - "it's not the crime it's the cover-up".)
This is not the kind of individual to "fear" as they are unresolved as to their moral center. At least they accept the possibility that an action they take could be in an objective sense "disgraceful", the issue is only the additional desire to avoid consequences. The kind of individual to be more concerned with is the psychopath who has no moral center and therefore would not characterize any action they take as being "disgraceful". Since there is no disgrace, a cover-up is a natural reaction to avoid having uncomfortable consequences to actions that others, for some bizarre reason, find disgraceful, whatever that term means.
OSIT.