Guilt Accretion of a Shrinking Train
A dream about the snowballing effect and the guilt of small transgressions that escalate. And about moral relativism vs deontological ethics.
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I was done with work one day, and I was getting on a train to go home from Suburban station in Philadelphia. There was a long line to get onto the train. But when I was finally in the cart, I found myself walking against a herd of people strangely walking out of it. It soon became clear that there was a technical issue with the train and that, apparently, it was going to be sitting there for a long while.
Across the platform was another train. I think it was an express train, while I was currently on the local. So I shuttled as quickly as possible across the platform. But when I got there, the doors were closing! I tried to get in by climbing up on the train somehow. It was a tall, classic, black steam-engine with doors way up high and the entire train stood two grand stories tall. If you've ever been to the Franklin Institute, and remember the gargantuan steam engine they have on the lower floor, a Baldwin 60000, then you'll know what epic thing it is that I'm talking about.
I was so close! And I was begging them to let one more passenger in. The man a mere two seconds before me was admitted, but I... I had to beg! The conductor contemplated judiciously about whether he should let me in... Or whether it was too late. In his stern, but somewhat apologetic face, he concluded that it was, indeed, too late, and he advised me that there was another train coming in about 10 minutes.
So I asked him frankly "Are you forcing me to take the next train?". "Yes" he replied with finality that cut to my heart-wrenching core. I felt abandoned.
So I reluctantly got off the train, and that's when it started to move. While I was climbing off the train, like a nimble spider, I was now, somehow, at the back of it -- hanging on while it was leaving. And then I thought, why don't I just hang on here and ride home at the back of it. I just thought... that as long as I hold on really tightly with my hands, and as long as I don't lose focus, I won't fall off the train and no one will mind. As it was moving, it started taking me along with it.
The ride through the suburbs, or countryside somewhere, was calm. We slowly chugged through a small town and someone standing there on the platform would have seen me, so I tried to hide from that person so that I wouldn't be caught and be forced to get off.
Eventually he saw me as we got close to my house. And then somehow, I think we were in Sweden all of a sudden... By the familiar garage in Jarlaberg. And it became evident that I wasn't a passenger at all, but that I had essentially stolen the train! I had stolen it!!! I became worried that the authorities would come looking for it and now it dawned on me that I was a fugitive from the law. Where was I going to hide this train?!
The train magically shrunk into a toy in the palm of my hand. I was walking around with it, and I needed to bury it somewhere. Quickly. I went down through the garage looking for spots, but there were all these cars driving around. There were so many people, eyes everywhere, and there was no good place to bury it.
And I thought oh my god, people are going to come and start looking for me. I walked outside and I tried to find a place to bury it. Under the soil somewhere, but also a place that I wouldn't forget. I felt like I had to really pay attention since this was so important. It wasn't a good time to be my absent-minded self, or to lose focus. I had to concentrate!
There were so many people around. And some of the roads were a bit muddy and overturned so I didn't want people to stumble across my stolen train, which they might have, if they were walking over it all the time. I picked a spot somewhere, I can't remember from the dream exactly where, but I see an image of it by the root of some small tree.
The next day, I got back to the crime scene, where I had first gotten on this giant steam train. I had left something there. Maybe a pair of jeans or something. Somebody was there. I wasn't alone. Was it the train conductor? Was it the man who had seen me roll through the suburbs? He said "we need to talk."
And then he said. "Do you know what you have done?! Do you understand?" He continued :"Yeah, you could get up to a year in prison for this." I actually felt a bit relieved that it wasn't longer than that, given the grand scope of the theft, but I also felt that it wasn't worth stealing a train just to get home. At the time, it had seemed like I was doing something ethically "right", "just", and "acceptable". I never intended or meant to steal the train. It just happened that way. I didn't think I was harming anybody, and I didn't realized the consequences or that it would be perceived as stealing a goddamn train.