Why Do People Steal?

The French anarchist Proudhon once said: "La propriété, c'est le vol!" For those of you who can't read other languages the rough translation of that is: "Property is theft" His anarchic statement makes me feel better about my recent actions... In the past 48 hours I have stolen the following things: 3 Nature's Valley granola bars, 2 Five Alive juice boxes, 2 empty apple baskets and ONE PAIR OF ARTOIS NON-Prescription glasses belonging to my roommate Alisha who claims that I am the artois one of the two of us. As if. I have come to believe that she is projecting her artoisness onto me. But lets move back to my main point. I was feeling really guilty about stealing all that stuff... Although I should explain the circumstances around each theft. Here they are in chronological order:

Theft #1 = Juice and granola bars: So I was doing this thing where I go to high schools and talk to high school kids about things, and at the school I went to yesterday morning they had bottled water, juice boxes, granola bars and packaged rice krispy squares for us to manger, while we were there. Immediately I grabbed a water bottle and chugged it back without even stopping for a breath. After that I felt like I was going to throw up my bagel and cream cheese from breakfast. This is when I had my moral dilemma. Free food is free food and I didn't have anything packed for my lunch. I needed to eat! If someone has to steal to feed themselves it is okay, right? First, I took one juice box and one granola bar because I figured that was my share of the goods. Then I got greedy. I suppose this is what brought down people like Conrad Black... If only we could settle with just taking a little, we would never get caught... But human desires only cease'th in death. Anyways, I decided to take two more granola bars and one more juice box. I told myself I needed to take more in order to share the bounty with Alisha... I guess it just goes to show how we always make excuses for our own immoral behaviour, yet we are so quick to judge the actions of others.

Theft # 2 = Apple Baskets: Okay, so I didn't really steal the baskets either... They were sitting beneath a sign which said, "Free Baskets," so I took them. My friend Alissa's grampa used to say, "If something's free take it. If you don't want it, give it to a friend." Moral of that story = always take free stuff, even if someone else is in greater need of it than you. And I took TWO baskets. Sure, maybe I need one basket... But two? That is theft. It is beyond my allotment of free baskets because I am just one person. How many free apple baskets does one person need?

Theft # 3 = Alisha's glasses: This theft also involved lying. I have 20/20 vision but I took Alisha's glasses to the library and pulled them out to "read" (pretty sure those quotations are properly used). This is deception. I don't think anyone who knows me saw me, but still... All though strangers probably think I am almost blind or something. It is a lie of omission. Glasses also make me look smarter too. Not only did I look like I had eye problems, I also looked like I had a genius level IQ. I don't even know what IQ is considered genius. I don't even know what IQ stands for. I also accidently dropped the glasses in the toilet. Sorry, Lish.

Still, maybe I didn't do anything wrong. If property is theft then you can't own anything without being a thief. So I didn't steal anything I just used some things that didn't belong to me. But they didn't rightfully belong to anyone else either. I don't even own this computer, or my arm.

Note: I am so not artois. I only wore four articles of clothing from American Apparel in the past three days. Also, I lied about the toilet thing.