I made a post a few days ago about a friend who resorted to violence to punish someone he thought did the wrong thing, and I've thought about it quite a bit since then.
I have changed my stance. The problem with my friend's reaction is that it leaves the other person no time to explain. He saw something, and reacted to it. The problem with this is that he doesn't know the entire story. He may have seen the last minute of something that had been on-going for the last hour. Perhaps the man in question had seen the woman make a hateful comment towards someone else while they were on the train together, and this was his way of getting revenge in his own small way. Who knows?
When you talk something out, at least you give people the chance to explain themselves. The only problem with this is that if the person really was a scumbag, they're probably going to lie about what happened, and unless you want to start calling witnesses and set up a courtroom outside the train station, you are unlikely to ever uncover the real version of events.
But I would like to think that most people would do the decent thing and either apologise, or double down, start spouting hateful remarks, and reveal themselves as an asshole to everyone around.
So while I still admire my friend for doing something to step up, I disagree with his choice of action. But hopefully if I ever see something like that in the future, I will have the courage to step up and do something about it myself.
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Short post today as I went back and finished off that Newbee vs Liquid write-up. That might be my longest post, at over 4000 words.
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