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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (4476)	2/16/2003 12:35:05 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7720

I don't get this. I've always been civicly minded. Three weeks after I moved to San Leandro, I'd ended up helping police thwart an armed robber. It didn't require any heroics. I just followed this man who was running from the store (I'm in my car). He's running really fast, clutching a bag in one hand while holding his other hand inside his jacket (I could see he was holding a pistol). When he got tired of running, I simply looped back and when I saw a security guard on a walkie talkie, I drove up and said, "You looking for the guy who just robbed Safeway?" He looked surprised and said "Yes." I said, "Well get in... I'll take you to him."

To: Lane3 who wrote (4476)	2/16/2003 1:28:30 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 7720

It's the dehumainzation of big cities, at least in part. In rural areas this just doesn't happen. Part of the rural culture is to help each other. But as urbanization increases, as government takes over more and more of the functions that were once carried out by local volunteers, churches, etc., people get increasingly away from the sense that they have any personal responsibility. In our community, for example, we still rely on a volunteer fire department, and volunteer EMTs, who happen to be one of the best trained medical units in the country -- we have the lowest incidence of death from heart attacks in the state and one of the lowest in the country because of the extraordinary response time of a core of volunteers locatred all over the island -- there is probably a trained EMT living within a mile of any point on the island, and usually much closer than that -- and the very high level of training which we instill because, lacking the immediate access to big city facilities, we HAVE to rely on the EMTs. This isn't really a non-sequiter. It has to do with the shift from community responsibility to governmental responsibility. As the latter increases, the values of the former decrease. As was shown, IMO, by this incident, by Kitty Genovese, and by others. Those things just don't happen in rural areas. (Of course, some other things do, but we won't get into that!)