Even more tragic is the instance one night last July when a 49-year-old man came to the rescue of a woman being sexually assaulted by two men at a Fresno gas station. This allowed the woman to escape, but he was badly beaten by the pair and left in the street, where he was struck and killed by a passing vehicle.That's true, but he died a hero. He could have passed by that scene and lived a coward. He could have lived long enough to die horribly of some disease of corruption. If you don't want to die a hero, how do you want to die?
The comment include the usual expressions, so well familiar as to be unremarkable. One, though, caught my eye. He was responding to a man who had declared that few women were 'worth' the risk, or the sacrifice.
Shame on you.There speaks the soul of a Christian knight.
Chivalry has never been a 2-way street and your rationalizing is either an excuse for your own cowardice, or an irrational grudge against women. Every woman is worth it. Christ died for her, you and me, so we’re all worth it.
I have held doors and been insulted, given up a seat on a bus and been chewed out. I still hold doors and give up my seat. I won’t let such nonsense keep me down. I’ve stepped between a stranger and the man verbally abusing her. He looked like he could take me, but he didn’t try. A man’s duty is to protect and honor women, protect and guide children. There are no conditions attached. God bless those poor souls who did their duty. God have mercy on you if you go to Him with such excuses for your failings in life.
28 comments:
Or a proper man, at least. God bless him.
Valerie
From the linked post: These are just a couple of newsworthy examples of heroic intentions gone terribly wrong.
I disagree. These are a couple of examples where things went badly for the gentlemen, in one sense, but they did not, at all, go "terribly wrong." The women whom he was attempting to rescue were, in fact, successfully rescued and delivered from their strait.
That's not a terribly wrong outcome.
Eric Hines
Duty is not, and never has been, about "what's in it for me". It is also not doing that which is easy or convenient.
The way this guy thinks about chivalry seems to be a little like public service admonitions that bad swimmers shouldn't jump in and try to save people who are drowning, or that distraught parents shouldn't run into fully engulfed burning buildings to save their kids. But the reason for those admonitions usually is that the do-gooder is certain to get himself killed without doing a darn thing to help the victim. We don't react the same way when a rescuer saves the drowning person or the baby from the burning house, even if he dies doing it.
Whatever's wrong with chivalry, the problem obviously isn't that it entails risk for the chivalrous person.
I'm reminded of a passage from "The Great Divorce" in which a pastor in Purgatory develops a new theology based on speculation about the wonderful things Christ could have accomplished if He hadn't gotten himself killed so young.
Reflect a bit on why cops hate domestic arguments-It may be distasteful, but the comment about whether "she" is worth it does have a core truth- better use careful judgement on intervention.
Sometimes it may be clear- some gang of strangers is raping your child. We have all heard about this one in the news lately.
The feral brute fighting his meth head girlfriend in a parking lot? Not so clear- there is a price to pay for everything- is risking your kids and wife's future by your death or incarceration worth it to break up a spat between two junkies?
As our host says, ". . . only the ones worth dying for."
If by saying you mean posting someone else's words here, I've "said" both things: what the poster says, and what this speaker says. What if you go to God and say, "Well, I didn't save her because she was a meth addict?" Isn't that just the kind of thing we often are warned against in the Bible: 'what you do for the least of these, you do for me?'
What do you think on the question as Raven raises it, Tex? Is she worth it? Would you risk dying for her? Do you think I should, separate from the question of whether you think I would?
The caption is posted here permanently but ironically, not as your own view? This is part of what confuses me about the message you mean to send about your view of the subject--and why I wouldn't feel I could predict what you would do. I'm fairly certain that it wouldn't be a lack of courage or generosity that held you back, if anything did. One possibility is that you'd die for her anyway, while regretting that she wasn't worth it. But as I say, I'm very much in the dark about how that concept fits in with your views. I daresay however you reconcile the notions in your own head is a credit to your character, but it remains a mystery to me. You've said before that you were primarily intuitive, not analytical, so the analysis I'm trying to apply may not be that relevant.
I believe I would have an obligation to stand with anyone who was being unjustly threatened in my immediate presence. Whether I would live up to that obligation is far less clear: I haven't been tested, and I make no claims for my untested courage. I would also find it difficult, I think, to overcome the hurdle of wondering whether I should die for someone who so clearly was trying to kill herself. Could I readily answer to God for that calculation? I don't know. I find it difficult not to harden my heart against self-destructive people.
If we change the facts so that she is merely in a pitiable and repellent state rather than a self-destructive one, I like to think that wouldn't affect my ability to stand up for her. What if she's severely unattractive morally--she beats her dog, cheats on her husband, and lets her children down--would I be less likely to risk myself to help her? Whatever the answer should be, the answer really is, yes, I would be far less likely to trade my life for hers. I think that the weaker she was in comparison to me, the more I might feel compelled.
Sometimes I try to think these things through by imagining a different kind of fight, one I'm uniquely suited for, as opposed to a physical fight in which I'd likely be fairly useless. I feel an instinct to step in and help someone with money if he's being abused unjustly by someone who knows he is made vulnerable by his poverty. It's kind of a "why don't you pick on someone your own size" situation. I've often been swept up in an urge to take on a legal battle for someone being ground up by the system. I could scarcely resist an urge to offer first aid of the sort I'm qualified by training to provide. In those cases, it's not of the highest important to me whether the victim is an attractive or upstanding citizen--it's more important that I'm stronger and therefore specially obligated to put my effort between the victim and injustice--but it does matter somewhat. Does it matter whether the rescued victim is appropriately grateful and appreciative? Maybe not in the heat of the moment, but for a sustained rescue effort, you bet it does.
It's not posted ironically; this is not a subject on which I entertain irony. It's just not mine. It's what another artist thought to say, which I think has a kernel of something important to it. Indeed, it's the something we're talking about now.
My own view is better read out of the art that I have created myself, especially the poem Errant. If you want it put in the pithy form of the poster, I would say that 'the ones who like it' are the ones worth living for.
I don't mean by that to criticize your frequently-expressed concerns about prices, or similar concerns in the woman about maintaining her own self-worth. I do mean things that we seem to agree about, for example, that if a young man should devote part of his life to trying to help women -- say by designing that rape-drug identifying nail polish -- the ones who are worth living for are the ones who love him for it, not the ones who scorn him for it.
They're the ones to love, to live for, to dream of when life or duty takes you away. That doesn't mean they never ask the questions that bother you. It just means that they like men like him, rather than hating him.
Well, it's true that, when I find myself in a position of relative power, and feel obligated to help someone in a position of helplessness, I don't want to contend with his hating me for being more powerful and willing to help. It can require a lot of tact to help without humiliating some people.
The situation perhaps comes up less with me, because it's so clear that any position of relative power I have is likely to be limited in scope and time. That is, I never ask anyone to acknowledge that I'm in a "one up" position permanently or universally. So I'm not going to have trouble unless the person I'm helping can't bear to have it demonstrated that he's less powerful, or more in need of help, in any situation at all, even limited or temporary. But if I do run into someone like that, it will likely turn out that I can't help without making one or the other of us, if not both, significantly unhappy.
By the same token, I'm not likely to resist or resent someone's generosity as long as it's not important to him to insist on a kind of universal and permanent relationship between us that involves his being the stronger and my being the weaker. I expect that, in the normal course of things, he'll be stronger in some ways and I in others.
I think that's all very reasonable. As I've told you before, I think we agree about a lot more than is apparent -- what we disagree about is the historical facts, more than we disagree about the desiderata for a just relationship.
I'd say that we rarely disagree about a historical fact, though we often differ on whether a fact is appalling. We don't experience nostalgia about the same things, no matter how thoroughly we may agree about the objective facts, presumably because a return of the old ways would have a markedly different impact on us.
I think we disagree substantially about what "the old ways" were, in large part because I tend to extrapolate from the facts to the rule, and you and Cass tend to suggest that the facts are exceptions to the rule. One reason we don't experience nostalgia in the same way is that we are talking about substantially different realities -- the world I think existed is not the world you think existed, in just the ways that offend you about it.
But this we have discussed many times, and at very great length.
You have a tendency to extrapolate from unusual facts to general rules; Cassandra and I are more pedestrian, and look at the experiences of average people rather than ideals that were almost never attained in practice.
So you've said. I've offered a lot of evidence from what seem to be 'average' people, though, and I find that I encounter the same response no matter what is offered.
Now I think the Medievals were significantly worse than we in terms of class. Just last night I was reading about the shepherd boy who followed Joan of Arc (another peasant, burned at the stake). He was captured at the same time and in the same battle as a highly noble French knight. That knight dined at the table of his captors that night, in all honor; the peasant was hamstrung, stitched into an oxhide, and thrown in the river to drown (as he did).
You've probably noticed that I pay significant attention to the poor and the working class. We've gotten that wrong, before. There's no nostalgia there.
It's a different issue on sex. I think we've misunderstood the old ways there. The evidence seems to me to be that women and men were held to different rules, but rules that protected and honored women; and if a particular woman wanted out of that, people made a way for her to live the life she wanted instead.
That's what I think is really true. It's not what you think is true. I don't think I can convince you, and I won't try again. But I do really believe it, and I've spent a great deal more time with it than most.
This is what happens when a bunch of civilians grow up never being trained in lethal force, mentally or physically.
This what? Being killed by a couple of no-good thugs, who probably didn't have the self-discipline to finish eighth grade?
You're probably right about that. An ordinary man should be able to take such creatures, if he had been trained in what used to be the ordinary way.
If I'm in a similar situation, I don't think "is the subject worth saving", since there's infinite unknowns about the situation that will never become known even after the fact in retrospect and armchairing later. So the subject is "is X worth it" without any way to know what "X" is, only assumptions can be made.
But this is still the civilian mode of thought, where "saving" and "construction" are prioritized.
What people should be thinking of is Are They Worth It?
Are they worth killing. Will it be a pleasant or beneficial experience?
If the user checks "YES" to any of the above, they then proceed to Phase 2. Which is then, "are they both worth killing and in doing so, can we get away with it via minimum negative consequences from society".
Check YES to that, then things progress normally.
If something fails or people go off into lalaland, then they can end up down a dead end.
It would be surprising if you knew how much time I've spent with the issue.
But what we can be sure of is that you feel you would be comfortable under the old system, and I'd rather be dead--which is not too surprising, considering that we would hardly experience the old system from the same perspective.
Grim, yes I'm referring to the conclusion, not the virtue, the methods, or the intent behind the users.
The only thing the universe cares about is whether someone is alive or dead. And the only thing the universe cares about is who is doing the violence, not who the violence is being done on.
So people who are pacifist or who have refused to obtain the knowledge of life and death, they can only rely on others or their protectors. They have no duty or responsibility to do otherwise, given their dependent role. Unless they desire otherwise, then they can begin to change themselves.
If a person, not having changed themselves, wishes to change the world for the better by saving people in it or objecting to society's issues... this then is the result. Most likely failure, in one part or another. This is just critical failure.
In other words, before a person can protect the world and the people in it... first they must guarantee their own self defense and obtain the means to do so.
That includes nations.
Texan, the old ways used to be entirely reliant on speed, strength, and size. But this is the 21st century, it's no longer based on that. Or rather, science and technology has been able to reverse engineer even martial arts, to a certain point, to increase combat effectiveness of people who don't have speed, strength, or size. What's mostly lacking is the Will and Intent. Psychological matters does play a predominant role in battle, sometimes far more than the physical part.
So the Old Ways, in the olden time, would be bad on weak people. The new way of learning the Old Ways in the current arena offers a lot more job flexibility.
I like it better this way. Then again, the "new way using the ancient methods" is why Palestinians can use their children as weapons. So good and bad there.
It would be surprising if you knew how much time I've spent with the issue.
I didn't claim to know, and I was diplomatic in my phrasing. But you and I are honest people. We've discussed this many times. I'll submit it to your own judgment. Do you honestly believe that you can speak to the subject in the kind of specific detail that you've encountered from me? Do you have the same capacity to talk about the examples? The literature? The scholarship?
I don't expect you to adopt my position just because I've spent more time with it, at a great level of specificity. I only hope you'll understand why I don't adopt yours. You sometimes seem to think that I'm doing something wrong, something I ought to feel guilty about, in not adopting your understanding of the old way. I don't begrudge you your understanding, though I think it's mistaken. But I don't apologize for not adopting it, either. Nostalgia may be warranted for some aspects of the world I think existed -- not all, especially as pertain to class or technology. If it is not for the world you think existed, well enough; but I am, at least, not foolish or ignorant in maintaining the disagreement.
Just what is the upside of playing the white knight anymore?
Well to answer the author of the script there or here, Crazy Ymar's suggestion is that if you want to play a "game", you should get realistic props.
ANd if you want to graduate to the big leagues, perhaps you need to learn about arms and armor... to be a knight. Just what is the upside of "playing" a knight anyways given that people have no clue how melee weapons work or how ancient or modern armor was useful for?
People in this century wonder why things blow up on them when they are playing games. I suppose that's the exact same idea kids got when playing around with guns that they never saw being demonstrated on watermelons. They accidentally blow out their friend's head, and then say "oops, my bad". Yea, that was a big dump in that "game".
We don’t usually consider the possibility that things may go badly for the would-be rescuer.
Yea, "we" the civilian corps don't think like that, because that's not how normal civilians thinks. "We", the crazy people, however always consider that option since the worst isn't losing and getting another try. The worst that can happen in physical encounters is that Thug A dies, Woman B dies, and Good Samaritan C dies, in that order. And there's no "play shield" that makes anybody immune to Death, btw. Don't act like you're a MSM journalist or Senator, you don't got immunity to much of anything in life.
American or Western culture is so pathetic that even the people that want things bad, never knew what it was really like. It was destroyed to such an extent, and intentionally so.
I know you don't mean any harm. You assume, I suppose, that I'm mistaken and that I'd probably like an old-fashioned woman's life after all if I gave it a chance or learned more details. I have not made a particular study of the Medieval Period, but I have read broadly in the history and literature of the last several thousand years. For someone like me, there is a shock on nearly every page, just in the casual assumptions about where women fit in--or, more often, where they didn't.
If I sound as if I were blaming you, it's not because I hold you responsible for what people did hundreds or thousands of years ago. But you do exasperate me by purporting to know better than I whether I myself could bear that life. You couldn't make that mistake if you knew or understood the slightest thing about me.
Couldn't we leave it that you might have been well pleased with those times, but I have ample reason to conclude they'd have been hell for me?
Well, we could, except that isn't quite giving the people of the age as much credit as I think they are due. What I think is that, if you found the life hellish, they'd have worked very hard to find ways to make room for you to live as you wished.
And I think this, honestly, on the basis of hundreds of examples of histories that read exactly that way. She wanted X; X was not traditionally a role women did; but she did it anyway, because many people including many men helped smooth the way.
So it's not that I think you'd be happy in the old roles. I honestly think you'd have been freer to choose your own role than you think you would have been. I don't think these people would have been satisfied leaving you in what you might have found as hell, which says a lot about them.
So I can accept the conditional: IF you were trapped in the kind of thing you think of as a traditional role, THEN you would have found it hellish. All I can't accept is that these people were so heartless as to fail to take that on board for a woman they loved and cared about; and that is based on a relentless set of examples.
We have a point of agreement! I wouldn't have found it hellish if they'd changed it utterly, and if they loved me enough, they'd certainly have done so.
Good!
Popular culture thinks gentlemen are about being gentle. An interesting corruption.
Should probably change that word. Also "men" doesn't mean much these days either. Language corruption results in misguided beliefs.
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