Like most people, I grew up being told that it was dangerous to hitch-hike, because of the many predatory drivers waiting to pounce, and also never to pick up hitch-hikers, because some of them were serial killers. I always seemed to me that the odds favored an eventual convergence in which a psychopathic motorist picked up a murderous hitch-hiker. I wonder what happens then.

Neighbor disputes are often like this: pure chance places very different  people side-by-side, one an inconsiderate boor, and the other an intolerant jerk. We know what happens then: exactly what has happened in Great Falls, Montana.

Brian Smith objects to the large decal on neighbor Shanna Weaver’s car. The decal portrays a white silhouette of a naked woman. To him, it’s pornography, and he objects to have to look at it.  “My upbringing dictates that the human body is a sacred thing, not something that should be put on display,” Smith said. Weaver, however, is not inclined to remove it. “It’s my freedom of speech, which he can’t take away,” Weaver says. “It’s no different than the mud flaps that you see on trucks.”So Smith filed a complaint against Weaver for violating the local anti-pornography ordinance, which was a stretch. [In an earlier version of this post, it wa stated that Weaver sued him for harassment, and was thrown out of court. That was in error, and Ethics Alarms apologizes for its mistake.]

Smith is the Montana equivalent of Ned Flanders: if a silhouette of a naked woman were really pornographic, every James Bond movie until Daniel Craig showed up would have been banned because of its opening sequence. (I especially liked the one in “The Spy Who Loved Me,” with the naked girl silhouettes doing gymnastics on gun barrels.) In his defense, that kind of decal doesn’t exactly class up the neighborhood. Weaver, who is kind of a Montana version of Rosie O’Donnell on steroids, is correct that she has a right to put tasteless decals on her car, but she doesn’t have to exercise her rights in ways guaranteed to upset her neighbors.

There is no reason, with people who choose to show each other due consideration or respect, that this kind of  dispute should ever arise. Either Smith should put up with the decal to allow Weaver the pleasure provided by her favored decoration, or Weaver should consider the sensibilities of Ned and choose a less provocative alternative, or they should talk it out between them, with the objective of making sure the resolution is satisfactory to everyone—without calling the cops or filing a lawsuit. Both neighbors, however, are possessed by an essentially unethical attitude: “I care only about me, not you. To Hell with you. You’re not me.”

And both are angry and miserable as a result.

Henry James understood how we can avoid these impasses. He wrote, “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”

This works. It certainly works for neighbors.

I have my doubts about the psychopath motorist and the killer hitch-hiker, however.