Witnessing an assault and doing nothing.

if you can see good outcome of getting involved, get involved, but all probabiliies say it's gonna get worse, just cause you were stupid, it has nothing to do with cowardice for me, guys gotta stop watching movies, muggng usually is done with a lethal weapon, wich is actually used quite often, and allot of people DIE because the mugger got in trouble and panicked, therefore intervening can lead to a rapid deterioration of the situation, because losing ones money etc. is allot better than losing ones life.

So my question is, are you more guilty if you intervene and the situation worsens than if you do nothing? Because in my oppinion you are.

Well, Sir General of the Bleeding-Heart White Knights. Please do regale me on your recent quests to rescuse all the damsels in distress. Please do tell me if you have even been witness to criminal activity. For I doubt your words have the bravery to back up their holier-than-thou message. Furthermore, I doubt you sir, that you could face down a desperate man mugging (raping, murdering,et.) one of his fellow men and women.

Your words are nothing more than condescending, self-inflated garabage made brashly due to your idealism. Words that have no backing other than their pompousness and self-inflation. Good day to you sir!

And as I said you don't have to intervene, call for help or start yelling at the guy doing it. I can't believe so many of you guys would just watch something like that and not even try to help.

The fact is you did nothing when you saw someone else getting mugged because you afraid(that's cowardice). You did not call the cops you did not yell at the guy or call other people around you to help. There were so many things that could of been done short of actually fighting the guy of, and you just watched it happen.

Sir, there was no "afraid" nor cowardice. There was simply the act of logic, we were not cowed by the criminal. I find fault with people who claim the moral high ground yet they do not know of which ground that is nor where it actually is. My family sat and watched not because we were afraid, but because we reasoned that if we were to get involved, we have much greater chance of losing one of our lives instead of a woman's purse. Sir, the hero may be your ideal person. But that hero is only risking collateral damage that is of much greater consequence than what is at stake.

Cowardice is the act of being afraid, Logic is the act of reason. And there is no reason to lose a life in exchange for a common purse. There were no cowards on that street, everyone there was using their natural born reason to avoid greater loss. Yet you insist on putting lives in danger for the mere act of saving a woman's purse. In this equation, you are placing greater value on a purse than human life.

That is your moral high ground that you contiune to entrench yourself in. Yet not once in your counter-arguements have managed to realize this, your high ground is a mere purse my good sir. And my "cowardice" is a human life, call it what you will. I have no interest in your chivalrious values and idealistic vigilantism. For they only run the risk of greater sorrow and unprecedented loss in exchange for little to nothing.

So to sum it up you were afraid hurting yourself. You're not a robot. I doubt that as someone was getting mugged you stopped and logically considered "hmm which course of action would result in the least damage to me and all persons involved". No one does that.

Once again, you keep ignoring this point. I'm not saying you had Rambo it up and fight off the mugger , you could have shouted at him or called for help(neither of which puts you in harms way). Because you had chance to stop that from happening and you did nothing, you are at least partially responsible for that crime.

By the way why are wording you posts so weirdly? it making me imagine you speaking like a pompous British aristocrat.

Yeah, like the mugger would leave witnesses. Pah.

He said it was the middle of the day, in a city. Muggers always leave witnesses. A muggers MO is to strike fast, steal what they want and then run away as fast as possible. Not kill anybody who sees them, they don't have time for that. All the more reason to intervene as they would almost certainly run away instead fighting.

You actually took me seriously?

No one asks that you seek danger, but that when the opportunity to help someone arrives you do it. Like if you see someone bleeding out on the sidewalk you don't pass him by because he'll get your cloths all bloody.

I wouldn't witness it, I'd attempt to stop it because I'm not a coward like you.

The fuck are you talking about? All that's asked of you is that you don't ignore the innocent person being mugged.

Of course I could. Even at 14 I could at least try. But the fact of the matter is that you didn't even try and you are a self-centered asshole for it.

I know, expecting you to care about other human beings was pretty ridiculous of me.

Idealism? I really don't think trying to stop people from getting raped and murdered is "idealism". Actually it's pretty much the bare-minimum I can expect from society.

You already said self-inflation, are you running out of words? Also, it's not pompous at all. I just wouldn't be a coward fuck like you.

I can't believe you would even attempt to defend this. You saw an innocent person get mugged and you and your father had plenty of muscle to stop it. Instead you figured, what's in it for you? And walked away briskly, forgetting the event ever happened. I wasn't lying when I said you were self-interested, craven, assholes. You really, really are.

The only just punishment is for you to get the crap beaten out of you in broad daylight and watch as the crowds of people around you just ignore it and pass on.

Glad to see you're taking the moral high ground.

Dude it's the internet, I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or not(especially on this site). I'd need to hear your voice for that.

True, although I did try to insinuate that it was sarcasm with the "Pah", although that apparently failed.

Yea I guess that was a little hint. I didn't really even give that a thought.

Well, now you know, I guess.

So i was on a class trip to Berlin a couple of months ago. The point of the trip was basically to make sure we weren't a bunch of neo-nazis. Anyways so this girl and I are just walking around in Berlin at like 9 ish. Going to various shops and what not. Somehow we manage to lose track of were we are going and end op in a pretty shity part of the city. To make a long story short we stumble across three guys ganging up on some skinny dude. Now these guys were scary and fucking huge (well compared to me anyways). One of them is holding the skinny dude by his neck and yelling at him in German. At first we just stand there not quite sure what to do. One of the guys turns around and sees us standing 20 meters away from them. He starts yelling at us then proceeds to walk towards us. So we get out of there as fast as we can. In that situation i would not think we are guilty of whatever happend to the skinny guy as we were looking out for ourselves. Plus we were in a forgin country.

Maybe they were the "Welcome to Germany!" committee?

No that was a buch of guys we met at sachsenhausen. Basically telling us that Germany was evil under Hitlers rule etc. It was a great way to start a trip in a country don't you think? You want to learn about german culture you say... Of to the concentration camps we go!

You're telling me you KNEW you could save them and you STILL passed it up?
Fuck, I could almost understand if it was an act of weakness. You're just an asshole then.

Only in the most twisted sort of way could your actions be considered logical.

In all reality you probably were. It was a flight or fight response and you chose the weaker of the two.

Do you know where it isn't? Walking away as some innocent person is abused.

It was because you were weak and self-centered.

I know if I was going for a mugging and started getting chased by 2 or 3 grown persons I would probably drop the purse and dash away. You'd give up chase like any reasonable person and return it. Actually the odds of you losing a life or even getting hurt are so vanishingly small that it's hardly worth considering.

Someone who would try to save an innocent person is not the "ideal person". It's the normal person. You are not normal. You are a coward. You are weak. And you are an asshole.

You do it in hopes that if you are in the same situation someone will help you out, not walk away.

Which you were. You probably pissed yourself right before you ran away.

Again, this wasn't reasonable at all. You're making excuses for your cowardice.

You wouldn't have lost your life. Rather, you would've gained a bit of dignity as a human being. Instead of losing it all by ignoring the whole problem.

Are you kidding? It was like coward central here.

Do you think your actions were natural born? Human beings aren't even reasonable for the most part. We're irrational animals. We do irrational things like help out each other with no expected return. Perhaps you were just raised improperly, I don't know, that wouldn't be your fault. But don't pretend for a moment that your actions are the norm.

No, the only reason not to is because you were afraid. This is an attempt to justify it to yourself. You weren't afraid, you were "reasonable". You weren't a coward, you were "normal".

Your life was never at risk. No one's was, not even the mugger risked his life. The worst scenario of any likelihood is that he gets away.

You know that's entirely not what anyone is saying. You did choose the more reasonable action from a personal point of view. You're just a cowardly fuck and an asshole for doing it.

What is reasonable isn't always right.

You walked away when an innocent person needed your help. You don't deserve the right to speak of morality.

No, it's not. Again, you're twisting things to justify them to yourself.

Yes, there is a human being behind your cowardice. And he deserves to be informed that he's a coward and an asshole.

Well ya, because you're a coward and an asshole.

Again, you're approaching morality as a math equation. People don't work at the soup kitchen to see what's in it for them. They do it because it's the right thing to do.

Also,
"Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once."

They should've taught you about lederhosen and bratwurst instead.

And @Karakoran, please, for your own good, stop this.

This is a completely different situation. Where as Soviet Streltsy was more than capable of helping, I really don't think you could take on 3 massive German men unless everything I know about you is wrong and you're really Arnold Schwarzenegger or something. And they clearly weren't going to let go of the presumed innocent man so distracting really wouldn't do anything.

And I'd assume you couldn't even call the police.