Philosophy of Choice [Monday | Period 1]

[not_in_the_book]

"You're walking down the street," Ronan said, and around the class the Danger Shop took the appearance of a city street. "It's late-ish -- say ten o'clock. You're on your way to a club, or just leaving the theatre. Maybe you're meeting friends for coffee, or you just had dinner with your parents.

"And across the street, you hear someone shout for help. Looking over, you can see something going on in an alley across the street. What do you do?"

Ronan made a small gesture with his hand, and somewhere across the street, behind the crowds walking down the other sidewalk, a small scuffle began in the alleyway; someone screamed.

"If you're like most people," Ronan continued, "the more people who are around, the less likely that you'll help. This is called the 'bystander effect'."

The screams continued. "So," he said, raising an eyebrow at the class. "Are you going to help, or not?"

[Wait for OCD is up!]

Comments

Re: Debrief

[godgavemecable.livejournal.com]

These weren't really easy questions for Toby. But then, he figured that was more or less the point of the class.

The nature of his ability meant he'd always been sympathetic to other people's problems, but until he'd come to Fandom, he'd never actually been able to look beyond keeping himself one step ahead of the kinds of people who might want to hurt him to the idea of helping other people out.

As long as the cost to himself wasn't too high, of course; he wasn't quite sure he agreed with the whole idea of selfless heroics.

"Because I was there, and he looked like the kind of guy I could manage to hold off, or at least distract," Toby said finally. "If he'd been bigger, or looked like he'd put up more of a fight, I don't know if I would have done the same."

Re: Debrief

[not_in_the_book]

Ronan nodded. "So in this case, you judged the risk to yourself to be minimal. What would you have done if you thought it was too risky to act as you did this time?"