If courts could level judgment that quickly, there’d be no backlog in the judicial system

At least subway accidents aren’t people’s fault

When we worry about things that we can do nothing about, we don’t worry about the things we can’t do anything about; we worry about the idea that there is something we could be doing about the things we think we can’t do anything about, and yet are not doing.

So, don’t tell people who are worrying not to worry about what they’re worrying about. Don’t give them advice. Give them a solution, and prove that they’re worrying about nothing, because there was a solution the whole time. You.

People don’t generally tell you their worries unless you ask, “How are you?” When people tell you their worries, they are responding to your concern about them. When you offer no solution, it simply reinforces their view that you’re not actually concerned about them in the slightest. If you’re not prepared to help, don’t ask. It saves a lot of misunderstandings: it saves them thinking you cared; and it saves you taking umbrage at their lack of gratitude for your expression of concern.

People call beggars scammers. Beggars are not scammers. Insurers who promise to pool risk are scammers. If you stop to give a beggar a coin, he will ask you for another, and if you give him another coin, he will ask you for another. And, if you give him yet another coin, he will ask you for another. (I know there are women and trans-gender beggars as well, but you get the point.) He doesn’t care about you, because you have plenty of money, and he doesn’t. He cares about himself and, when you give him a coin, he thinks you care about him, and, if you care about him, why wouldn’t you give him another coin, and another, and another? Why wouldn’t you? If you care?

After the third coin, you feel as if you’re being scammed. You’re not being scammed, you’re giving coins to a beggar and, if it’s not enough, you start to think that other people ought to give a coin as well. Point is, if other people gave a coin to the beggar, that would be your cue to say, “The beggar has enough coins, I don’t need to give him a coin,” and you would walk on by without giving. Your generosity is based on everyone else’s concept of generosity, not on what the beggar needs or what you could afford.

Suppose there was a huge explosion in a subway station on the way to work and you happened to be passing by the station. Your work starts in ten minutes but all these people emerge from the subway, some with missing limbs, no eyes, hair burned off, scorched, pieces of shrapnel embedded in them. Would you help? Would you roll up your sleeves and tend to the wounds of the injured? Who’d be first? The guy whose arm was blown off? The woman with glass embedded in her eye socket? They’re really injured, y’know. You can’t just walk off; so, who’s first? Maybe set them in a row and tell them to wait their turn. No good looking around anxiously for the ambulances. They’re on strike, no ambulances. It’s you or no one. You or no one.

Wait, suddenly there’s a bus that stops, and fifty people stream off the bus to help the injured. It’s okay. You can fuck off to your work now. The people on the bus, they’ll help the injured. We don’t need you no more. Off to work, you’ll need to run, you’ve only got five minutes, now.

So, off you run, and at the street corner you see a beggar. He asks for a coin. So you tell him to fuck off. Because you’re in a hurry and, after all, the only reason he’s a beggar is because it’s all his own fault. At least subway accidents aren’t people’s fault. That’s it: when a beggar asks you for a coin, you must ask him, “Is your predicament the product of circumstances that are your own fault, or of circumstances that were entirely beyond your control?”

And, whilst he’s trying to figure out what that all means, you have a moment or two to reflect on how much control you have over your own circumstances.

If courts could level judgment that quickly, there’d be no backlog in the judicial system.