2025 - 10 Civil Courage

Civil Courage

Hello.

The older I get, the more I get upset about many things happening around me, and sometimes I suspect that I will simply no longer fit into this world in a short time.

A text:

What should one do, how should one behave?

It was always fun to go out, hit the streets, go to bars, restaurants, even travel to other cool places. All of that was awesome, and you hardly ever had to worry about getting hassled by others, putting up with annoying music, or getting annoyed by people's bad behavior. Today, that is no longer the case! And the question arises as to how much one can endure without taking action against harassment of any kind. Because you can't always “run away”!

An incident from the last few days that could easily have been incorporated into a film script with lots of blood, ambulances, and police:

We go out for dinner. Two tables away sits a family of five: a tall father with curly hair, a slim mother dressed in black who looks somewhat emaciated, a blonde toddler who has just learned to walk, a boy of about six with medium-blond hair, and a slightly older and taller blonde sister. In the meantime, some of the family, including the father, disappear into another room that has some play facilities for children. The first courses are served, with simply the mother and the toddler at the table. A little later, the father, daughter, and son join them to finally tuck into the food that has already been served. The medium-blond son starts to disturb and annoy his sister while she is eating, whereupon she slaps him. This little rascal suddenly puts on an extremely aggressive expression, like a teeth-baring Gibraltar monkey, grabs a knife from the cutlery basket and waves it around in front of his sister's head. The mother had just picked up the toddler, jumps up, separates her son and daughter, snatches the knife from the little monster and now scolds her daughter, saying that she should not tease her brother. The father is simply not present during all this.
Here is the Devil's Boy, who, tellingly, looks almost exactly like and wears similar clothes to the evil Anakin Skywalker (Jake Matthew Loyd), who harbors evil within himself and later becomes Darth Vader.

Two days later, same restaurant. We had just sat down at a table for two when the same family came in again and sat down at the table right next to us. We had already ordered, but immediately got up and fled to a table three rows away. Once again, the father and daughter disappeared into the next room, while the medium-blond knife-wielding boy made his way to a table closer to us, where there were some wooden toys available. While he was doing this, the blonde toddler climbed onto the chair next to him. After a short time, the knife-wielding boy hit the toddler in the face, first once, then again, until the mother stepped in and dragged her little one back to the dining table without comment.

Now here's the question: What could I/we have done? The most obvious thing would have been to jump in, grab the knife-wielder by the arms, yell at him to let his little brother be, and take him back to his mother. Then we would have had to give the mother a piece of our mind about what a broken family she had, why she didn't take proper care of her children and their education, and ask where her husband was, who apparently didn't seem to care about any of this.

But: We simply watched in disgust, got worked up with each other, but did nothing. The question would also have arisen as to whether the mother, if we had picked up her devilish son and brought him back to her, would have immediately called the police—child abduction, coercion, or whatever!

After paying the bill, Paloma went outside to smoke, and shortly thereafter, I paused briefly in front of the mother with a withering look and said, "Can't you educate your children? Why do I have to put up with this horror here in this place?" She simply waved her hand dismissively.

Conclusion: How far should civil courage go today, how far should one intervene in such unfamiliar, shocking situations, which fortunately one has not had to experience in one's life so far, but which are becoming more and more common? And what risks can or should one take in doing so?

One more thing: We're staying here on Formentera in an apartment from the Emar – Adults only group (adults only—no children!). How did that happen?