Sunday, August 19, 2007 Malilong: We are still honest By Frank Malilong The Other Side
“JOSELYN Panganiban was withdrawing cash from an ATM in a busy mall in Manila when she noticed the mobile phone. She looked around before picking it up but then looked relieved when the phone rang. ‘I was hoping the owner would call,’ the 26-year-old said. ‘I felt sorry for them and could imagine how worried they must be.’
“On the other side of the world, in a square in central London’s lively and cosmopolitan Soho district, another mobile phone has been mislaid next to a statue of King Charles II. Close by, a man in his late twenties wearing a casual black jacket is feeding bread to the pigeons. He waits for a gaggle of Japanese tourists to pass by, then grabs the phone.
“Glancing around warily, he hurries away into crowded Oxford Street. He doesn’t call any of the numbers in the handset’s directory and its owner has not seen it since.”
The opening chapter of the latest novel by John Grisham? Another work of fiction by the spin masters of the Arroyo administration?
Neither. In fact, the incidents narrated above actually happened, according to the Reader’s Digest, reporting on an experiment that they conducted in the most populous cities of 32 countries. The purpose? “To get a global snapshot of how ordinary people behave when unexpectedly confronted by a classic moral dilemma: Do I try to give it back or keep it for myself.”
For their experiment, the Reader’s Digest hired a two-man team, one of whom would intentionally leave a brand-new, ready-to-use phone behind in a busy public place while the other watched from a distance. “We rang the phones after a few minutes and waited to see if anyone would answer and return the phone, call us later on the preset numbers we have programmed into the handsets or keep the phone for themselves.”
What they found, said the article, “surprised and intrigued us.” Among these findings: On average 68 percent of the 960 phones “lost” worldwide were returned and three of the top five cities with the highest percentage of recovery are in Asia. On the minus side, the cities where the most number of phones (43 percent) were lost permanently to their finders are also in Asia: Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur.
Among the Asian cities, Seoul topped with 90 percent of the phones returned. Manila and Mumbai (India) tied for second at 80 percent.
What do these figures say about us?
That we are an honest people, said business and civic leader Bob Gothong who was the first to call our attention to the article. Honesty is part of the value system handed down to us by our ancestors and it is something that we ought to leave as a legacy to our children, he said.
What about those who snatch, rob, steal and, kill you for, your phone? They are the minority, the 20 percent, although they are the ones who often get the publicity for their misdeeds. But against them are four times more Joselyn Panganibans who practice honesty because it is the right thing to do.
History tells us that even ancient societies already had their share of bad eggs. The point, Bob said, is that we should not allow these misfits to shake our belief that, in spite of them, we can still be honest.
