Helping a drunk on the street

[Tim R]

This happened like half an hour ago to me and I learned a lesson from it, because it was a bit shocking tbh.

I was riding my bike through town on my way home, when I saw a person laying on the sidewalk. Just smack in the middle of the way and he was rolling from one side to another. I looked at him and saw the other people who also just looked at him and then simply kept walking. I thought "what the hell why is no one helping" so I turned around and got to him. Turns out he was pretty drunk and fell, he was repeating himself so I assumed he might've hit his head, he was also and that he was in pain and that he had psychological problems. So I called an ambulance. As we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive, people kept passing us, looking at the person with an aversive expression of disgust and pity. Of the dozens of people who passed us, two asked whether I've called someone. Two. Let that sink in. 

The ambulance arrived, they helped him, I went home, where Just a few minutes ago, I was taking about what happened to a couple of people on a relatively unknown social media platform. And even there, they said "I would've also walked away" or "why did you help him, maybe he was dangerous" and "I would've only helped him if he looked relatively normal", etc. 

 

So I was confronted with two lessons: people don't give a shit about you, even if you are obviously in a painful situation right in front of them. 

and second: they always have some bullshit rationalization for why they shouldn't help. Not only for why they shouldn't help but why they shouldn't even stop by and ask "excuse me, are you alright?" Not even that. 

So I thought: what if this happens to me? Or some of my friends? Or a family member?

There's no reliance on people. This is stage Orange at it's most toxic form. Dog eat dog. And you're being judged for not playing along. 

So if you see someone like that, imagine that this person was you. Totally fucked up and in pain, rolling around on the street with 95% of society looking at you as though you were a piece of dog sh*t. 

[Eternal Unity]

5 minutes ago, Tim R said:

This happened like half an hour ago to me and I learned a lesson from it, because it was a bit shocking tbh.

I was riding my bike through town on my way home, when I saw a person laying on the sidewalk. Just smack in the middle of the way and he was rolling from one side to another. I looked at him and saw the other people who also just looked at him and then simply kept walking. I thought "what the hell why is no one helping" so I turned around and got to him. Turns out he was pretty drunk and fell, he was repeating himself so I assumed he might've hit his head, he was also and that he was in pain and that he had psychological problems. So I called an ambulance. As we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive, people kept passing us, looking at the person with an aversive expression of disgust and pity. Of the dozens of people who passed us, two asked whether I've called someone. Two. Let that sink in. 

The ambulance arrived, they helped him, I went home, where Just a few minutes ago, I was taking about what happened to a couple of people on a relatively unknown social media platform. And even there, they said "I would've also walked away" or "why did you help him, maybe he was dangerous" and "I would've only helped him if he looked relatively normal", etc. 

 

So I was confronted with two lessons: people don't give a shit about you, even if you are obviously in a painful situation right in front of them. 

and second: they always have some bullshit rationalization for why they shouldn't help. Not only for why they shouldn't help but why they shouldn't even stop by and ask "excuse me, are you alright?" Not even that. 

So I thought: what if this happens to me? Or some of my friends? Or a family member?

There's no reliance on people. This is stage Orange at it's most toxic form. Dog eat dog. And you're being judged for not playing along. 

So if you see someone like that, imagine that this person was you. Totally fucked up and in pain, rolling around on the street with 95% of society looking at you as though you were a piece of dog sh*t. 

It had already happened to you. God incarnated into that life so you won't have too.

 

Edited April 30, 2021 by Eternal Unity
One of Leo's finest

[Tim R]

Just now, Eternal Unity said:

It had already happened to you. God incarnated inti that life so you won't have too.

@Eternal Unity You mean so that I don't have to help that person? 

[Eternal Unity]

Just now, Tim R said:

@Eternal Unity You mean so that I don't have to help that person? 

You don't "have" to do anything. You choose to.

[Opo]

2 minutes ago, Tim R said:

There's no reliance on people. This is stage Orange at it's most toxic form. Dog eat dog. And you're being judged for not playing along. 

If someone is orange it means that they integrated all the previous stages. 

My parents are blue and they care about those kinds of people. So idn how to explain this through sd lens. 

7 minutes ago, Tim R said:

Of the dozens of people who passed us, two asked whether I've called someone. Two. Let that sink in.  

They saw you standing there so they assumed you have it handled. 

[Mason Riggle]

2 minutes ago, Tim R said:

@Eternal Unity You mean so that I don't have to help that person? 

Maybe- 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Once upon a time, there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbours came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.” The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”

The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbours then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.” The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbours came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”

The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune." - Alan Watts

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren’t, shall I put it like that? We aren’t better because we want to be. Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because all the do-gooders in the world whether they’re doing good for others or doing it for themselves are troublemakers: on the basis of “kindly let me help you or you will drown,” said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree. Sometimes doing good to others and even doing good to oneself is amazingly destructive because it’s full of conceit. How do you know what’s good for other people? How do you know what’s good for you? If you say you want to improve then you ought to know what’s good for you, but obviously you don’t because if you did then you would be improved. So, we don’t know. We do not really know how to interfere with the way the world is.” —Alan Watts

[Tim R]

Just now, Eternal Unity said:

You don't "have" to do anything. You choose to.

Yes, perfectly true. 

@Eternal Unity Maybe you remember a few weeks ago there was a thread about rape and whether you'd interfere or not. And some people in there thought they could rationalize rape by using non-duality. 

I replied "there's no reason to help, but equally there's no reason not to help".

So what to choose? Why not choose Love over selfishness?  

And yes, this "Love" can still be expressed for selfish reasons (spiritual ego, right?). Which is why Jesus gave the trick/fake command "thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart and with all thy mind".

[Tim R]

6 minutes ago, Opo said:

If someone is orange it means that they integrated all the previous stages. 

@Opo Not necessarily. people get indoctrinated with Orange culture. Yes, Orange itself  is the integration of the previous stages, so in that sense you're right. But it's not them who have integrated the previous stages. True, they don't have to go back, but it wold probably good to take a look under their epistemological and metaphysical hood. 

9 minutes ago, Opo said:

They saw you standing there so they assumed you have it handled. 

That's what I thought at first. So I did an experiment to test this hypothesis: I stood a few feet away so that people wouldn't assume that I had anything to do with him. Still tho, same result. 

[Tim R]

@Mason Riggle People misunderstand Alan Watts so easily... This is the problem with listening to him: on one hand he's a great teacher. on the other hand, it's so easy to become a zen devil by listening to him. 

One of my absolute favorite excerpts of all his talks is this one, and I'd like to use it as a response to your post:

 

"[...] but if you will treat yourself for a while as a cloud or wave and realize that you can't make a mistake whatever you do, because even if you do something that seems to be totally disastrous it all come out in the wash somehow or other, then through this capacity you will develop a kind of confidence. And through confidence you will be able to trust your own intuition. Only the thing that you have to be careful about is - and many people who have not understood then properly fall into trouble here - is that when they take the attitude that I can't possibly make a mistake, they overdo it. Which shows that they don't really believe it. So a lot of people come on and say ""well in Zen anything goes, you're naturally with it anyway, you are a Buddha anyhow and I'm gonna prove I'm the Buddha anyhow by breaking all the rules"". So you've got on the weirdest, filthiest clothes and you're gonna steal things and all kinds of things like that, that's overdoing it. That shows that you haven't learned. You're overcompensating, because before you were told to do this to that the other and watch and be self-conscious and nervous and so on and so you just go to the other extreme. But this is the middle way - of knowing it has nothing to do with your decision to do this or not whether you decide that you can't make a mistake or whether you don't decide it, it's true anyway."

[SolarWarden]

Nice job.

A few years back I passed a noise from a kitty that was somewhere in the woods near a street. I looked back and saw other people just ignoring it and passing by. So I went back and saw the thing and it was starved to the bones. Took it home and we got him to a animal shelter where she then got adopted.

22 minutes ago, Tim R said:

@Opo  Orange itself  is the integration of the previous stages, so in that sense you're right. But it's not them who have integrated the previous stages. 

Thanks, that was an eye opener in how spiral dynamics works.

[Mason Riggle]

@Tim R perhaps my relatively unique perspective causes me to be a Zen Devil, but then again, I'm not really sure what that means. If I was a Zen Devil, would you be inclined to judge me for being how I am? Would you look at me with an aversive expression of disgust and pity? Would you be inclined to help me?

I do not really know how to interfere with the way the world is, because it doesn't seem there is a way to interfere with the way the world is. 

Any attempt to change what is occurring, is just more 'what is already occurring'.

Edited April 30, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[Tim R]

16 minutes ago, Mason Riggle said:

@Tim R If I was a Zen Devil, would you be inclined to judge me for being how I am? Would you look at me with an aversive expression of disgust and pity? Would you be inclined to help me?

I do not really know how to interfere with the way the world is, because it doesn't seem there is a way to interfere with the way the world is. 

Any attempt to change what is occurring, is just more 'what is already occurring'.

@Mason Riggle I know that I myself am a Zen devil to a certain degree. I have one foot in Zen and the other in Devil. Though of course, both feet are actually standing on pure Zen ground - only I'm still too much of a fool to see it all the time. I wouldn't judge you for being a Zen devil, but depending on what you do, I might judge you for that. I'm no saint and I try not to pretend to be one. 

 

True, any attempt of changing whatever is going on in the world is simply more of the same, but for that exact reason I will superficially discriminate between good and bad and play my role. Because no matter what I do, that's what's happening anyway. 

I haven't forgotten that me helping that dude doesn't mean jack in the end, but neither does anything else. Whatever happens, is Good. 

Choose your way. Alan Watts made it clear, you're a Buddha anyhow. And if you really know that, you don't have to go around doing devil shit in order to prove that you're a Buddha anyhow. 

But it just so happens that for some reason you start feeling more and more compassion on your way, and then you simply act from there. 

[Mason Riggle]

19 minutes ago, Tim R said:

 I wouldn't judge you for being a Zen devil, but depending on what you do, I might judge you for that.

Recognize that 'what I do' and 'what I am' are the same thing.  This is like saying you wouldn't judge a volcano for being a volcano, but if it erupted and destroyed a village, you would judge it for that.   Perhaps what you really mean is, even though you wouldn't judge me for being how I am (in the sense that you find me ultimately responsible for being how I am, and therefor responsible for changing how I am), you will retain your ability to behave pragmatically (what you deem to be  'useful' for you, whether 'you' is defined as a human organism or the entire Universe) towards me. 

Edited April 30, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[Tim R]

@Mason Riggle I wouldn't judge a volcano for erupting, because I wouldn't hold it accountable for doing so. But if you would for example go kill 20 people, I would judge you for that and it wouldn't matter to me whether the killing is what you do or who you are. And on top of that, I would behave pragmatically towards you, aka selfishly. Of course. 

Wouldn't you? 

[DecemberFlower]

@Tim R They are free to choose to behave in such selfish and indifferent way however i would bet that 99 percent of this people if they found themselves in situation of that helpless person and people would behave towards them like they did to this guy they would demonize and criticise society and people for being selfish idiots and treating them like crap. Hypocrisy at its best

Edited April 30, 2021 by DecemberFlower

[Mason Riggle]

1 minute ago, Tim R said:

 I would behave pragmatically towards you, aka selfishly. Of course. 

Wouldn't you? 

Of course. 

What if I killed 20 people, and then you found out I had a massive tumor in my brain pressing on my amygdala, which distorted my perception of threats and danger... would you think I was a bad person, or an unfortunate one?

[Meditationdude]

@Tim R you’re an amazing person ? Action is what defines us!

 

I’d like to think I’d do the same thing but my only hesitation would be COVID. 

[Tim R]

2 hours ago, Mason Riggle said:

What if I killed 20 people, and then you found out I had a massive tumor in my brain pressing on my amygdala, which distorted my perception of threats and danger... would you think I was a bad person, or an unfortunate one?

@Mason Riggle Unfortunate.

[Arcangelo]

@Tim R Welcome to planet earth.

Once upon a time I was a drunk on the street throwing up and a kind stranger helped me by holding my head while I vomited.

Thank you Tim!

Edited April 30, 2021 by Arcangelo

[Arcangelo]

5 hours ago, Tim R said:

a few weeks ago there was a thread about rape and whether you'd interfere or not. And some people in there thought they could rationalize rape by using non-duality. 

I replied "there's no reason to help, but equally there's no reason not to help".

I would interfere by calling 911. But in the heat of the moment IDK what else would I do.