Consequence VS Reputation

This is like a part 2 of consequence VS morality but with a different subject here – reputation.

Basically, the argument is the same. If one day, you face a situation where purposely ruining your own reputation can prevent you from facing a serious consequence so bad that it can damage your mental well-being, are you prepared to sacrifice your reputation?

Reputation is not built in a day. It takes months and even years. Here we suppose most of us are generally good and kind people, law abiding citizens, everything about us is just fine and normal. That is the kind of reputation I am talking about, not the kind where you are infamous for certain behaviours, notoriously known for certain practices etc. In general, a nice person. I am sure most of us can be described as ‘nice’. I hope so…

Back to the debate. Imagine you need to break that image to prevent a consequence. You know you are still that nice person but you have to portray yourself in a very bad light. You need to tell people bad stuff that you did not do, you need to shock them with false revelations about yourself, and you essentially need to tell a white lie. You know by saying this, it may result in many more people knowing something more about you. They may start to shun you; they may look at you in a peculiar way in the future, they may gossip behind your back about you, for something that you did not do at all. You ruin your reputation and have to carry this bad name for perhaps as long as you live. However, if doing this saves your sanity, would you do it?

Tricky one this. Sometimes, life just gets the better of you. We have to interact with the environment and in doing so, we create situations for ourselves. Sometimes, things go wrong, seriously wrong. You will be put in a spot where every single move is critical. You need to make sacrifices, you need to take risks. They do not always pay off and the odds are always against you somehow.

So if consequence and reputation goes head to head, which one would you choose? I know a lot of people will say ‘depends on the situation’. For the sake of weighing both the aspects, we have to put both in its most extreme cases – consequence: a chance of you going berserk is very high. Reputation: you have to live with a bad name for the rest of your life.

The choice is yours. You decide.