entrapment?

Overheard in the breakroom:

"The police will sometimes come up right behind you at night, hoping to get you to speed so they can give you a ticket. I hate that; it's wrong!"

This sounds similar (maybe not equivalent...) to a female police officer standing on a street corner in a red-light district soliciting sexual services. When she catches a john, he gets the same outcome as the car driver who went over the limit. There is a price to pay for yeilding to base urges.

Our boundaries are a blend of internal and external forces. In our culture, the tendency is toward external forces. When the pressure from headlights behind me makes me break the speed law, I have demonstrated external weighting on my boundaries. If I maintain my speed and tolerate the tailgating (that is wrong!), or maybe just pull over and let the impatient driver pass, that's evidence of strong internal boundaries on my value of abiding by posted laws. I wish I responded this way every time. Unfortunately, I don't.

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