Boy Interrupted

Last night, Friday, 10:23 PM, January 27th 2012, I was making a purchase at a neighborhood grocery store. I handed the young cashier a twenty and she opened her drawer to make change. At that instant a teenage boy approached me from behind pushing a bicycle. The cashier looked at the boy nervously as he nodded for me to get out of his way. I turned to the girl, ignoring the boy, and extended my hand for my change.

The girl did not move to make change but stood staring alternately at myself and the boy in fear, apparently of some kind of confrontation. At this point the boy said, "I need to get by."

I ignored the rude lazy boy who would not apparently burn the additional calorie it would take to circle through the open lane behind me. The girl now stared at me in horror as if I had challenged the ruler of some barbaric nation in his very own domain. The boy then said, "I need to get by. Could you move?"

I said, "When I'm done here, I'll move."

Of course I could not complete my transaction because the cashier was still frozen in terror over the prospect of violence in her register lane, violence that she was cultivating through her submission to this boy's bullying, and her obvious wish that I would complaisantly do the same.

The boy, perhaps realizing that it seemed suspicious that he wanted to get between me and my money, and indeed get very close to an open drawer with hundreds of dollars in plain sight, finally made an attempt at tact, "Please, I just need to park my bike over there," as he pointed to the ice machine with his chin.

By now I was firmly in the 'rude zone' and ignored him, turning back to the cashier, and putting out my hand. The boy shook his head as if I were some hopelessly daft person and wheeled his bike around to where it could have been a full minute before if he would not have insisted on interrupting my business.

The cashier looked at me in wide-eyed amazement, as if I had just given the class bully a wedgie before the entire student body. The boy, still far from being a man, even a young one, went about his business and so did I.

This episode points out three problems with modern American society:

1. That teenage boys [naturally] feel the need and the right to bully adults
2. That most adults—particularly women—live in fear of teenage boys, a fear that, rather than admit to, they cloak through an overweening desire to appease the little monsters and an insistence that men do likewise
3. That these two factors have resulted in a barbaric teenage substrata of our society that lives outside of the acceptable rules of behavior traditionally adhered to in all previous human societies, which has cultivated a sense of entitlement and empowerment among teens which makes attacks on adults and isolated teens highly likely

Boy Rewarded

A few weeks ago in the first week of January, on a Friday morning, in the same neighborhood, I boarded a bus packed with adults headed to work and youths headed to college. A high school student who was hooking school boarded the bus at the next stop and stood plaintively with hands out looking back toward the passengers. This drama is played out so often on buses, and has such a predictable outcome, that the bus driver just pulled off, knowing that the boy had hit the pity jackpot.

Three middle-aged women and one young woman all stepped forward to load this boy down with change, with statements such as, "There you go baby, something extra for lunch."

The boy did not even say thanks. He knew that he was entitled to this money. I will tell you this, if that boy steps up to a lone middle-aged woman at a bus stop at night, and she does not give him what he is entitled to, he will take it.

I have interviewed many such women, who have been mugged by the very boys that had begged change from me [panhandled] on the next stop up mere minutes before these women boarded the bus and said with a note of surprise, "I just got rolled by some kid!"

Why Charity is Evil

Charity serves one purpose and one purpose only: to make the giver feel good about themselves. The nobility of medieval Europe admitted that this was the case, so intentionally took no steps to improve the lot of the poor. After all if there were no poor to beg than what opportunities would be left for the nobility to pave their way to heaven? Most Moslems were too far away to conveniently kill. There weren't enough intellectually inclined people to be labeled as heretics and hunted down in local crusades. And the Jews just seemed to be getting scarcer all the time. So, with so few readily available victims to be slain for God, charity was the default option into heaven.

Now, that might seem awful to you. But really, at least medieval man-butcher philanthropists were honest. Modern charity-givers would actually have us believe that they are doing it for those they give to; even espousing the cause of elevating the poor to their own level. The fact is people give to charity and to the punk skipping school and heading out to score some weed, for the same reason why good looking people like to have sex with the lights on, because it makes them feel good about themselves.

This modern combination of giving to the poor and also telling them that it is their right not to be poor, while making no demands on them, has cultivated a culture of intimidation. You see, ancient peasants knew that accepting charity confirmed their inferior status. The bums of the modern world know no such thing.

As a Darwinist, with full knowledge that charity is evil and that giving is nothing more than an attempt by the giver to either find comfort in submitting to mild aggression or feel good about giving, I accept that all who are willing to so give and so submit deserve to be preyed upon. These heaven-bound people have self-selected themselves as prey items on the earthly social menu. I suppose martyrdom, even of this anemic variety, does have its appeal.

Just remember that if you have decided to play such a minor league martyr than you have consigned some of those who are weaker than yourself to intimidation and the entire spectrum of violent crime that grows in its fertile soil.

How Civility Cultivates Victims

A commitment to civility in the classic sense is a bad thing unless the people committed to this sense of civility—of avoiding confrontation and not being rude—adhere to the code of the duel.

Yes, I just wrote that, and I mean it.

You see, we have inherited our sense of civility from generations of extinct European whack jobs who would engage in a lethal duel at the mere hint of an insult. Adhering to such a strict code of civility in a society where it is not acceptable for me to cane Bike Boy, with full knowledge that I would then be called upon to defend the righteousness of my actions in a duel to the death against his older brother, makes rudeness inherently powerful. In all three of the situations outlined above [including the lone woman against the panhandling punk] the person who is most committed to the rude course of action has the upper hand up until the actual commencement of physical hostilities.

In modern self-defense situations the rude party usually possesses the strategic advantage and hence position [angle-of-attack] and initiative. Holding the superior position and the initiative typically translates to a tactical advantage. This process is called momentum and is one reason why almost all violent crime is successful.

Never Give In

Although I am not recommending being loud, offensive, derisive or insulting, and certainly not threatening, if we actual want to retard the predatory development of the American Man-child, then we should always say no to their rude demands. These punks and the adult beggars that proceeded them on the social scene at busy intersections back in the God-forsaken eighties have unwittingly trained multiple generations of Americans to step out of their way and/or immediately begin digging into their pockets, wallets or purses as a first response to verbal aggression.

If you are that guy who would have stepped aside for Bike Boy, or that gal who was willing to open her purse for Bus Boy, than you are already a highly trained mugging victim.

At least you are good at something.

James LaFond, January 28th 2012