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by xxs
2860 days ago
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Even if you'd be able to keep your integrity and not play the "game", likely there would be another one to rat anyways. Similar system did exist in east Europe before the wall fell. Major part of population used to report one another... |
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1. Reporting a crime to the police so they can check and sort it out if needed. This is extremely prevalent in Western societies and seems predicated on trust in the police to do the right thing. Examples: people reporting screams for help they overhear from a street; drivers reporting erratic behavior of other drivers on the road.
2. Knowingly reporting a thought crime to overzealous authorities that will severely punish for that crime, sometimes knowingly falsely, sometimes for your own benefit. Example: telling your local uchastkovuy that your noisy neighbors were doing anti-soviet jokes in the hope of getting rid of them.
In a lot of post-soviet countries there was a lot the latter and none of the former (in fact, a lot of Russians think the former is "ratting out" and is immoral). In Russia there were numerous cases of people being killed or raped in places where dozens or hundreds could hear the screams for help, with no one actually calling the police. On the other hand, you can be pretty sure that shady stuff happening on a Western city street will lead to police response.
It's kinda hard to tell where the exact boundary between those two kinds of behaviors is, especially lately with all the pushback against drug prohibition (is reporting someone smoking a spliff in Stockholm moral?). But it exists.