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Warning: This is a long and sometimes very personal rant. It was posted on Comm in response to a discussion of people who just stand by and watch when scammer victimizes a new or unsuspecting player. It is not the criminals Tip was referring to ... I think he knows them all too well. He was talking about the rest of us. The ones who stand silent, the ones who don't get involved. A little bit of history ... March 13, 1964 Queens, NY 3:00 am A young woman named Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was stabbed to death by a serial killer in the courtyard of the apartment building where she lived. Her neighbors heard her screaming for help ... 38 of them, as the police later found ... over a period of half an hour. Not one person helped. Not even to call the police. The single call to the police was made after she was dead. After she lay bleeding for half an hour. After the attacker returned and finished her off. 38 people, safe in their apartments. One phone call, by one of those 38 people, could have saved an innocent life. Not one person helped. That murder, and its aftermath, provoked national outrage. How could people do that? Why didn't anyone care? People with lots of letters after their names still debate the reasons to this day. Why didn't one of those 38 people make the phone call that would have saved Kitty Genovese's life? My father died a year ago ... no, this isn't another murder story, he died in a hospice bed at the age of 82, in the completion of a life well lived. He and I had some major issues between us. He was not an easy person ... I suppose people of strong principles never are ... but he was also my hero. Some of my most powerful memories are of my father and what he believed in. My father was a pacifist. He did not believe that violence was ever justified, for any reason. I disagreed, but I know the price he paid for that belief, and I respected him even though I believe he was wrong in some things. One day, my father and mother and their little girl ... I must have been about six ... were walking back to the car in a shopping mall parking lot. We came upon some sort of disturbance. A crowd of people, all kinds of people, were watching a couple of guys fighting. Well, they had been fighting ... now, one was lying on the asphalt and the other was standing on him, stomping him. My father walked up to them. Reached out and pushed the stomper off of the guy on the ground. Not violently -- just enough to get him off. Then my father stood there, with his hands at his sides, waiting for the stomper's retaliation. The guy just stared at him, then disappeared into the crowd. I don't know to this day why he didn't even take a swing at my dad. Most likely he thought if he did, he'd get a lot worse than a push, since he couldn't understand a way of thinking that didn't involve violence. Anyone who knew my father would have expected no different. He believed that responsibility was a personal thing. He is the one who taught me the core of my own beliefs: If not you, then who? If I won't do it ... if I won't fix it ... if I won't get involved ... then who will? Why should I expect anyone else to do something if I won't do it? Whether it's an innocent woman being stabbed to death, or a naive player being victimized by a scammer in a computer game ... if you don't do something, who will? "Society" isn't some abstract thing, existing outside of us, that we sort of exist in. It is us ... all of us. Just as we depend on society for our own security, we have a responsibility to do the same for others. This is true in the real world, and even more true in Nexus. I don't think I could have done what my father did, not just then but many other times ... I'm a coward ... I will always live in his shadow. But what do I have to risk in a computer game? What is the worst that could happen to me? Game over? If he could risk his life to do the right thing, how can I do any less in a computer game? How can any of us? |