DC Metro Stabbing: Cause and Effect vs. Courage

I wrote about this story and its attendant considerations here, but in light of a recent article by R. Douglas Fields purporting to explain why so many able-bodied people abandoned their duties as members of civilization, I thought I would return to the well this one last time.

Predictably, the author sets his and everybody else's default to coward:

"It may be comforting to indulge in speculation about how you would have responded to the deadly attack on Sutherland, but the fact is that it is difficult to know how anyone will react to a sudden threat."

Pre-determining that in a dangerous situation you'll act to save another human being's life isn't an indulgence, nor is it comforting to do so.  It's an acknowledgment of our shared burden as members of society.  Just because it's difficult to know how you'll react, it doesn't mean that you can't react courageously, or that you shouldn't do it, or that you shouldn't prepare yourself to do it.

"The multiple factors and uncertainties mean that there is rarely one correct response to a sudden threat."

This is where we get caught up in minutiae to justify inaction.  Hick's Law notwithstanding, there really is one correct response to the threat that has led me to write two articles: stop the guy stabbing someone else to death.  This response can take many forms, of course, but all of them are correct if you're stopping the killer.

"Bystander apathy is a psychological phenomenon in which witnesses to a person being harmed are less likely to intervene the more people there are present. This is thought to be a consequence of the herding instinct of human beings to do as they see others do. But when many people are present it is a much more complex situation. This leads to confusion. Is the person being attacked a victim or another criminal involved in, say, a gang fight? The Metro riders who saw the assault on Sutherland experienced neither apathy nor confusion, however. They experienced terror."

Your worth as a person is measured, in part, by doing the right thing despite what you see others doing.  The number of people present in the subway car didn't create confusion or even lead to it, unless they were engaged in mass telepathy and were all thinking the same thing.  This was obviously not a gang fight.  Experiencing terror does not excuse you from acting properly.  Courage is determined by how you act despite your terror.  Ask any soldier, firefighter, or cop.

"I cannot know what those witnesses lived through on that train, but I am confident from my knowledge of neuroscience that they did exactly the right thing. Their response was not a matter of bravery or cowardice or apathy—it was a matter of mortal strategy. Engaging the homicidal robber physically could have resulted in mass casualties. From all the situational information those people rapidly assimilated, that was their collective conclusion. So the passengers tried to appease the robber with cash instead and no one else lost their life."

C.S. Lewis must have known R. Douglas Fields, because he described him perfectly in his Abolition of Man: "We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."  The witnesses on that train did not do exactly the right thing: Kevin Joseph Sunderland, were he able, would likely agree.  Neither a scientific explanation of cowardice nor a redefining of the term bravery excuse the shameful inaction of the passengers on that train.  Your mortal strategy needs to be flexible enough to take monsters like Jasper Spires into account.

Spires was one man with one knife.  Against numerous assailants ready, willing, and able to subdue him, he would not have prevailed, and mass casualties need not have been the result.  Appeasing monsters never works in the long term: they'll always come back to eat you.  If not now, later.

"Honed by eons of evolution in a dangerous world of survival of the fittest, the reaction these neural circuits trigger is usually correct; otherwise our species would have gone the way of dinosaurs. This is why rational Monday morning quarterbacking about the passengers’ response on the Metro is misguided. No fault should be leveled against any individuals on that train. They did as their brain and evolution equipped them to do."

Thousands and thousands and thousands of human beings have overcome what their brains and evolution equipped them to do over the course of civilization, from the Vigiles of ancient Rome to the modern United States soldier, from the blue-painted Pict to the grandfather punching out a would-be mugger.  Scientists like R. Douglas Fields would simply distill us into mere products of brain chemistry, despite the overwhelming evidence that we, as thinking people, transcend that every day.  We're not products of cause and effect.  There's more to us than evolution.

July 4 DC Metro Stabbing: Four Things to Consider

This is an absolutely horrific story from start to finish. The only way it could be worse is if more people had been murdered.

If we're going to be grown-ups, we need to confront stories like this, analyze them, and draw reasonable conclusions. As always, it's horrible when things like this happen, but it's worse if we don't learn anything from it.

When you're done reading the article, read this Redditor's account of what happened, and then read this analysis of the behavior of the bystanders.  

There are a number of issues that need to be unpacked before we can slot this into its proper context.  

• He's Got a Knife: The weapon Spires used was a "small, black folding knife." Knives are very difficult weapons to deal with in a self-defense context. It doesn't take a lot of muscle to power a knife: one touch and you've been cut. Knife wounds are particularly horrific. When I worked in the self-defense industry, just about every person I knew who taught personal defense said that they'd rather go up against a person with a gun than a knife any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Guns miss. They jam. They run out of ammo.  Knives don't have those problems. If you've ever seen surveillance footage of knife attacks, you'll learn how fast a knife can do life-threatening damage to an opponent. Even if you don't bleed to death when cut, the aftermath of a knife attack can be permanent: a colostomy, nerve damage, disfigurement. Across the board, it's all bad.  
• Batman Fantasies?: Once you've read a story like this there's a temptation to think, "Well, if I was there, I would've done something. I would've tackled the guy." Good. You need to think this way. Visualization is immensely helpful to success. If you take the opposite view, "Oh, if I was there, I would've cowered like the rest," or the ever-popular wishy-washy, "Well, I don't know what I would've done in that situation," then you're setting your default position to coward. You're virtually guaranteeing victimhood. Don't do that. General James Mattis of the USMC famously said, "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." When you're out in public, that's a far better thing to internalize than, "What I don't wish is that I had somehow tried to attack the assailant. I am a little bit larger than he was, but I would not have won."
• I've Got a Family: A common explanation used to excuse not getting involved is, "I've got a family." Kevin Joseph Sutherland had family who loved him. I've got a family. So why should I put myself at risk, potentially make my wife a widow and my child fatherless on behalf of someone I've never even met? Because to not do so when circumstances call upon you is far, far worse. One vital part of living in a society worth maintaining is doing the moral thing despite the cost, especially when lives are at stake. Spires has already forfeited his right to be a member of polite society; he's a blight on civilization itself. The price of DC metro trains and internet and Game of Thrones On Demand and the right to free speech and Pizza Hut Limited Edition Hot Dog Bites Pizza is sometimes paid in blood, and if you've decided that your blood is too precious to be spilled above all others, then you're not pulling your weight. Pediatric brain surgeon? Millionaire philanthropist? Schoolteacher? It doesn't matter. Answer the call or get out. How can you look at yourself in the mirror afterward if you don't? Civilization occasionally demands us to act in an uncivilized manner to protect itself. You don't get to opt out of the tough stuff because you've got a family.
• What Second Amendment?: Part of what contributed to the mass cowardice in this situation was that nobody on that train was armed. When you're unarmed, you're putting yourself at the mercy of vermin like Spires. Places that deliberately disarm their citizens like Washington D.C. have an absolute responsibility to protect their citizens. The DC Metro police utterly failed in this case, and Sutherland's death is as much on their hands as it is the sheep who watched him die.  

It's fascinating to read the comments on the Reddit thread and see just how many people have normalized victimhood. The comments congratulating the eyewitness on his consoling the dying man are disgusting when you consider that Sutherland need not have died at all. Had the other riders on the train accepted their responsibilities as American citizens, the outcome may have been different.

Yes, knives are unbelievably scary. What's scarier is being stabbed to death by a drug-addled monster in full view of able-bodied but passive citizens who will only step forward when the monster has fled. Don't hold my fucking hand. Grow a backbone, carry a weapon, and fight alongside me.