A Philosophical Evening of Dance and Deceit
Went dancing again last night. Good fun. A salsa place in Bree Street called "Que Pasa?", where Andi helps out with classes one evening a week. Went with her and Nicolette, a friend of hers from old who I was meeting for the first time.
I’m driving back from town at about 2am, heading down Main Road in Retreat. Not the most salubrious neighbourhood by any standards. So when I see a 20-ish blond girl walking down the road in jeans and a sweatshirt, I naturally offer her a lift, lest something awful befall her on her way to wherever she’s going at this time of night.
And so the story unfolds. She’s only going a few hundred metres down the road, but you see, she’s out at this time of night because someone stole her cellphone and she’s trying desperately to get it back, and her parents are out of town and she needs to get hold of them and they don’t have a landline at home and she has all their cell numbers on her SIMcard, so she really has to desperately urgently get the phone back, and she’s found out where the guy who stole it has pawned it and it’s just around the corner but she doesn’t have any cash to get it back and she just needs a little bit of money to get the phone back and blah blah blah…
By this stage the bullshit-detector is going full-blast. There are so many holes in this explanation that I don’t know where to begin, but she’s still clearly in trouble, so I help her out and listen to her asking me to wait by the kerb and she’ll be back in two minutes, she promises, and as she gets out of the car I know for certain that I’ll never see her again. Sure enough, she walks around the corner, and I back up to see where she’s going, just in time to see her hop into a darkened car with a few unsavoury guys sitting in it, and they head off into the night.
I’m not about to follow them, because I’ve been having a good evening up to this point, and I really don’t want to spend the rest of the night trying to stem the bleeding from fresh gunshot wounds. In the end, some things just aren’t worth taking offence at.
Why didn’t I send her on her way as soon as her implausible tale of woe was presented? Not really sure. Perhaps it was just late and I just couldn’t be bothered. And the thought of her heading off alone into the treacherous night, lying little wench though she might be, was still too unappealing. I guess I felt that even frauds and liars don't deserve the thousand terrible things that could have happened to her in that situation.
But the philosophical conundrum which I’m left with is this – when does one cease to be a compassionate person with a willingness to help one’s fellow human being in need, and when does one just become a dumb-ass instead?
The cash, I’m not too worried about. I’m at a point where I’m perfectly happy to write that kind of thing off as an educational expense. If learning a valuable lesson ends up costing a certain amount of money, then screw it – it’s money well invested.
So I suppose the more important question would be: is it worth being taken advantage of occasionally in order to avoid becoming distrustful and uncaring?
I’m driving back from town at about 2am, heading down Main Road in Retreat. Not the most salubrious neighbourhood by any standards. So when I see a 20-ish blond girl walking down the road in jeans and a sweatshirt, I naturally offer her a lift, lest something awful befall her on her way to wherever she’s going at this time of night.
And so the story unfolds. She’s only going a few hundred metres down the road, but you see, she’s out at this time of night because someone stole her cellphone and she’s trying desperately to get it back, and her parents are out of town and she needs to get hold of them and they don’t have a landline at home and she has all their cell numbers on her SIMcard, so she really has to desperately urgently get the phone back, and she’s found out where the guy who stole it has pawned it and it’s just around the corner but she doesn’t have any cash to get it back and she just needs a little bit of money to get the phone back and blah blah blah…
By this stage the bullshit-detector is going full-blast. There are so many holes in this explanation that I don’t know where to begin, but she’s still clearly in trouble, so I help her out and listen to her asking me to wait by the kerb and she’ll be back in two minutes, she promises, and as she gets out of the car I know for certain that I’ll never see her again. Sure enough, she walks around the corner, and I back up to see where she’s going, just in time to see her hop into a darkened car with a few unsavoury guys sitting in it, and they head off into the night.
I’m not about to follow them, because I’ve been having a good evening up to this point, and I really don’t want to spend the rest of the night trying to stem the bleeding from fresh gunshot wounds. In the end, some things just aren’t worth taking offence at.
Why didn’t I send her on her way as soon as her implausible tale of woe was presented? Not really sure. Perhaps it was just late and I just couldn’t be bothered. And the thought of her heading off alone into the treacherous night, lying little wench though she might be, was still too unappealing. I guess I felt that even frauds and liars don't deserve the thousand terrible things that could have happened to her in that situation.
But the philosophical conundrum which I’m left with is this – when does one cease to be a compassionate person with a willingness to help one’s fellow human being in need, and when does one just become a dumb-ass instead?
The cash, I’m not too worried about. I’m at a point where I’m perfectly happy to write that kind of thing off as an educational expense. If learning a valuable lesson ends up costing a certain amount of money, then screw it – it’s money well invested.
So I suppose the more important question would be: is it worth being taken advantage of occasionally in order to avoid becoming distrustful and uncaring?
posted by Sentinel at
7:29 PM
1 Comments:
Yes,
of course it is. Firstly, nobody goes through life getting it right all the time.
And apart from the fact that getting the crap beaten out of you would be a far dumber way of learning this particular lesson, I'm still a strong believer in karma.
There will come a time when someone genuinely needs your help. If you give it, I think it helps the world to become just that little bit brighter, and underpins the progress made my humans overall in working together - the basis of which is trust of strangers.
Scott
By
Anonymous, at 7:31 AM
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