Yeah it’s an overreaction. But
a) those things happen when you’ve pushed things out into the extremes
b) this shit was WAY off script
A – There is a dangerous trend out there, one that I’ve been trying to explain in the latest book. But the short version doesn’t carry the impact or significance of the idea. That is “Don’t take your normal mindset with you into conflict” (I get ‘yeah, yeah, tell me something important Einstein’)
That is important. It’ll make you think you can get away with stupid, aggressive and impulsive acts and that there will be no consequences. Dead fuck there thought he had the ‘right’ to text, confront, insult and –yes — physically assault an old guy and NOBODY was going to tell him different.
The hole in his chest shows he was wrong
B – Where I’m from, we’d shoot a stranger for breaking social scripts. The reason why is because we assumed that he was working his way up to doing the same to us. That’s how you set someone up for a robbery or attack.
Let’s talk about the social scripts and rules broken here. Rule number one: As a big bad stud, you don’t Monkey Dance with old men, women and children. You lose status if you do. Rule number two: Unless you’re being a real jerk about it, if someone calls you about doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing, you apologize, explain the good reason why you have to do it and offer to leave. Rule number three: you don’t reach into another man’s space, take something from his possession and throw it into his face unless you are about to attack.
The problem about this situation is the number of people who whinge, whine and condemn about how he didn’t ‘deserve’ to get shot for texting. He didn’t get shot for texting, he got shot for breaking the social script (which generally protects people) with the wrong guy.