Our Obligations

I learned a few things in law school, believe it or not. However, most of the lessons never stuck, at least not consciously. A lot of it wormed its way into my unconscious, and pops out when I least expect it. There are a few things that I do recall, that made an impact. One of these things was during Torts, with Professor D.G. It had to have been near the beginning of the semester, when we talked about duty. The example he gave was one man drowning, while another man saw the first man drowning. The question he posed, did the second man have a legal obligation to save the drowning man?

Hint: No.

He then told us that not even Michael Phelps had a legal obligation to save the drowning man. The law can't force people to do the right thing. It's all about the minimum to get by. That drives me crazy, because it also shows how little people will do if you leave them to their own pursuits. You can't legislate compliance with morality under our legal system, beyond a basic level. (You could in a dictatorship or similarly oppressive governmental system, but that raises new issues. I'm not advocating this course, it's like killing a fly with an elephant gun.) Then again, look at the series finale of Seinfeld, and you see how ridiculous it would get.

It's up to us to do right. And it's hard. And we fail. I went grocery shopping, and as I parked, I noticed a guy with a bottle of orange fluid trying to get the hood on his car open. I own the same make and model of car, I could have walked over and popped it in a few seconds. Didn't, because I didn't feel like it, but it stuck with me as I went shopping. I told myself if he was still out there when I was done, I would help. He wasn't, but I should have helped in the first place. How hard would it have been to take fifteen seconds out of my day?

This was a small thing, but: "Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." - H. Jackson Brown

What does this say about me, that I should have helped a stranger, and did not? And am I going too far? Wouldn't I help my friends? Probably, but again, we can't legislate people to do the right thing. Maybe I would've had a trickle down effect if I did help? Who can say? The moment has passed, and I have to move on. However, I did donate some money to a charity outside the grocery store to assuage my guilt over that situation. Now, what does that say that I think I can buy peace of mind with money?

***

Good gravy, that was a frustrating weekend. I went out every few hours to shovel the snow off my car, because it wouldn't stop, and I didn't want to spend three hours straight moving snow. As it turns out, when you calculate it, I did spend three hours shoveling, just spread out. At least it broke up the monotony of watching the snow drifts build, and the sad trees with their drooping branches laden with snow.

(If you haven't figured out, I am writing these in advance, and then scheduling a post for the future.)

I know a little better what Sisyphus felt like, rolling that damned boulder every day, only to watch it roll back down the hill every day. Every couple hour I went outside, only to see the same levels of snow all over my poor car. Still I persisted, having remembered how bad the shoveling was last time back in December.

I wandered outside Sunday morning, having not gotten much sleep due to not being able to sleep, as per usual. It looked like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the area covered in snow after the nuclear blasts blotted out the sun. An inch-thick rind coating the streets, feet-deep snow drifts abutting road sides. Cars buried everywhere, and nary a soul to come out and witness the whiteness. Foul cold, the kind that threatens to frostbite your skin, flay it off in large frozen chunks.

On the flip side, it was reassuring, even peaceful. Lot of quiet, which is par for a Sunday morning, but even more so this morning. What few people I did see, they greeted me with a shake of their shovel, or a nod of their head, and I returned it in kind. I got to imagine a world abandoned by man, on its way to reverting to nature's control. A few more months like this, you'd hardly be able to imagine anyone colonized it, called it home.

I wonder if that wouldn't be such a bad thing. They have television shows that play the ultimate what if, at least from our perspective. That mainstay of historians, the game of what if asks "what if", and then extrapolates outward. Alternate and speculative fiction derives wholly from this basic question. Traditionally, it refers to past events, and then flips them on their head. For this what if, we ask what if everyone disappeared. Game changer, if I ever heard one.

There are a few ways this could go. Some people say that we need to head into space to discover new worlds, especially new worlds that could support human life. Unspoken in their hopes and dreams is that we, as a species, are ruining this world for our continued existence, as well as that of other species on the planet. The planet itself will find a way to continue, with or without us. When we speak of ruining the world, it's only from the perspective that we need it as is to continue living. Then, we can go and start over fresh, then ruin more worlds.

Or, maybe we kill each other, via WWIII. Nuclear, chemical, biological agents, all of them are in play. It's brinksmanship and bluster and pride that push us all towards the edge, and unlike a video game, you can't reboot to the prior save point if you make a big mistake. We're playing for keeps. Everyone realizes that, but it only takes one person to go too far, before we can't go back.

Maybe the new ice age comes and buries all of us. The earth doesn't possess a soul, far as we know. It's just a giant rock with a liquid-hot iron/nickel core. But what if it did, and it got tired of what we were doing, and decided to snow us all over? First, it tried to heat us off with global warming, and that failed. Maybe we go in the opposite direction. After all, some believe hell is cold, not hot. How well could we do amidst conditions constantly like what we just experienced?

Any way it goes, I walked through the snow, and felt a bit at peace. Then I slipped and almost busted my head open.