Do we just let them do something terrible, or do we try and stop them?

Heard there was a court case going on with the accused arguing for his gun rights, yet he has discharged his firearm in public several different times. If someone has a restraining order on him with such a history, maybe he needs help understanding things. If I use my rights to abuse yours, what piece of the rights pie do I have left?
 
The middle path is where reality lies.

You have influence. Use it.

You do not have control. You have to accept what they do with your influence.
That's a nice articulation of our abilities in respect to others' morals/decisions.

Nevertheless, we can actually exert control over many actions. So we can't stop someone from having a murderous intention, but we can stop them from murdering.

In terms of interfering with or preventing bad actions, there needs to be proportionality: weighing the bad of interfering with someone's actions against their intended bad action. For example, pushing someone to the ground and restraining them is proportional to stopping armed robbery, but it is not proportional to stopping queue/cue cutting. Sometimes any interference just makes things worse, so inaction is preferable. Other times not interfering permits more damage to the good, and interference is preferable.
 
there needs to be proportionality

Why tho
Isn't that also an individual moral judgement call in itself 🤔
People's actions are never proportional, they're terrible at math
 
Helped someone many years ago. She started beating her forehead into the wooden mantle, so I carefully held her and she fought me. Took her to the ground and held her underneath me, talking to her softly and not hurting her. She stopped fighting after a few minutes. Can't really remember if that happened twice or more times than that.

I know she stopped. I'm not going to stand by and watch things like this. There are times when a person's free will, rights, and others words unmentioned must take a time out. Don't think I could leave somebody like that alone and watch. I chose to stop her until she stopped for good.

Man asked for a job and I hired him. Checked on him filling the bins with small inventory. I noticed a wheeze coming from him. Also noticed he acted super tired and short of breath. He was from an island in the Pacific: a large man. He spoke little English. I called my doctor and friend for over 40 years. Told him to take care of him, make sure he got what meds he needed, and I would pay for it all. Told him he could not afford the meds, and he was on the way now.

Showed the man where to go, who to see, and to get well. Also told him he should find a job in the city he was living in. His wife and three other ladies came to the office the next Monday to thank me and say all sorts of nice things. They said nobody had ever done anything like that for him. It kept him alive, as he had pneumonia really bad and no help. Sometimes people are sent to you for help. Help them.
 
The trouble is we tend to to over-simplify these sorts of situations when discussing them, but it's different when we encounter them in real life isn't it? To be honest, long ago when my two year-olds insisted on walking on the road rather than the pavement I didn't spend too much time arguing with them but grabbed them and made them safe. Of course we then explain to them about the danger of road traffic, but two-year-olds are not particularly strong on logical persuasion and pretty well advanced in defying parents, so it's a gradual process over many months to get the message over, and a lot of physical intervention in the meantime.

So what's the difference between immediately physically intervening with a child compared with an adult? I'm assuming that the situation is urgent and that there is a very real risk of someone being badly hurt. It seems to me that it's to do with the mental and emotional competence of the person concerned, and whether they are in possession of the right knowledge and skills to react OK themselves. If someone becomes mentally disturbed, suicidal and runs amuck with a machete then I guess no-one would object if they are physically restrained before trying to talk them down.

On the other hand, there are situations where it's far more tricky to work out what to do. As I've said before in the forum, I delayed stopping my father driving until his dementia was fairly well advanced, and I agonised over it for months. He wasn't going to decide to stop on his own, and his ability to live independently was only possible because he could still get around in his car. In the end I got the UK licencing authority to insist on a medical assessment, which he failed. It was the right thing to do, but I felt so very bad about doing it. This was a much greyer situation to deal with than a threat of suicide. It really spotlights how difficult these situations can be because I had to take his freedom of choice away from him without his consent - but if I hadn't and he'd gone on driving until he hurt himself or someone else badly, then this would have been very much on my conscience and I would have been at fault for not intervening before then.

These situations are all different, they are frequently messy and we are often left either with doubts about what to do, or a false confidence that we do know what to do. Some of them are slow burns, like with my dad where the situation just crept up on us slowly over a year or so, and there was no threshold event that said a line had been crossed. Other's like my toddlers need instant action with no time to think. In all cases, though, there are two ways to get the situation wrong, and it's vital in pondering the principles of intervention that both types of error are fully considered. One is to forcibly intervene when it's the wrong thing to do, crosses someone's boundaries and was none of our business to start with. The other is to not intervene and watch in horror as a disaster unfolds that we could have prevented. What we really want is one of the other two possibilities of course - to intervene and avert a bad situation, or to stand back and let the person concerned work through their problems OK.

To be honest, when I've been in these situations I've realised that the average human being hasn't the wisdom of Solomon and that all we can do is form a judgement as best we can. Even professionals with years of experience of dealing with folks in trouble can get it wrong. I guess what seems more important to me is not to try too hard to be a black belt virtuoso in the ethics of these situations, but at all times to act with as much wisdom as we have - and especially to act in love and good faith. We may well get it wrong in particular situations, but that is part of life and we learn by getting things wrong and doing better next time as a result.
 
Why tho
Isn't that also an individual moral judgement call in itself 🤔
People's actions are never proportional, they're terrible at math
You can just go by the standard that courts rely upon: the reasonable person.

Most reasonable people would restrain someone from throwing rocks at passing cars, but most reasonable people wouldn't restrain someone from pulling faces at motorists. The difference is that drivers can safely choose to ignore the person pulling faces, but they can't safely avoid being hit by rocks.
 
My measure is what I like to describe as "bashing your head bloody against a brick wall".

I am all in favor of exerting influence up to the point where it becomes counterproductive or ineffective.

Just honoring the truth of where influence ends.

You can pick up a toddler and put them in their room for some quiet time.

Try doing that with a 6 ft teenage boy.

I just see too many people overestimating their influence and undermining their goal.

I always say we have the most influence when we are in relationship.

As an example, when my son was a young pre-teen, he was at home alone in the afternoons after school. He would roam around the neighborhood in that time. His dad wanted to set a rule that he couldn't go outside in that unsupervised after school time. I understood the concern, and recognized the lack of power of enforcement. We were both working at that time and neither of us could afford to not be working at that time to enforce the rule. A rule was an illusion of control that might feel good as a parent, but realistically would have no impact. Honoring that limit to influence allowed us to develop some buy-in from my son around some things he was willing to do to increase safety while he was out in the afternoons.

So I say, absolutely use influence where you have it, but pretending we have it when we don't always strikes me as a comforting lie that leaves everyone worse off.
 
It is almost automatic with me. I act or don't act. It's almost like running to the report of a gun, while most people are hiding or running and screaming. Never been a deer in the headlights: not for long.
After all, we are all different. A lot of us have many similar traits, but we still act differently in on-the-spot situations. We do our best.
 
Telling people how to live their life and also telling them how much I dislike the decisions they make that I disagree with to make them feel guilty and force them to change has been my go to for years.

It doesn't work, and it also pisses everyone off around me. But how else will people know what to think? I gotta tell them. People aren't capable of reasoning through their own problems, except for me of course. I'm so good at it, I will reason through your problems for you. You are welcome.
 
Telling people how to live their life and also telling them how much I dislike the decisions they make that I disagree with to make them feel guilty and force them to change has been my go to for years.

It doesn't work, and it also pisses everyone off around me. But how else will people know what to think? I gotta tell them. People aren't capable of reasoning through their own problems, except for me of course. I'm so good at it, I will reason through your problems for you. You are welcome.
If you can't fix a problem, become the problem.
 
Telling people how to live their life and also telling them how much I dislike the decisions they make that I disagree with to make them feel guilty and force them to change has been my go to for years.

It doesn't work, and it also pisses everyone off around me. But how else will people know what to think? I gotta tell them. People aren't capable of reasoning through their own problems, except for me of course. I'm so good at it, I will reason through your problems for you. You are welcome.
If you can't fix a problem, become the problem.

That was my idea, I thought of it first.
 
I found over the years that it is in my best interests to get involved and show there are better ways. When someone knows what they are doing, most will stand back and let them just do it. When this is done to make things better for everyone, some people question it. When or if they hear the whole story from someone else, they may stop questioning and try helping. This is when things start to have better outcomes for all involved.

Teaching helps others when what we teach is right. I was taught by my Father how to catch a baseball "The right way" before little league. He taught from his experience, and it made me a good outfielder. Played centerfield for the city champions at age 12. It was because of my Father that I played so well, and all the time he spent hitting 350' or longer balls to me when I was a runt. I threw a lot of people out because of the way he taught me to catch the ball ready to throw it, and taught me to preplan where I was going to throw it in several scenarios while waiting. I was but a reflection of my Father's skills.
 
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