he's_not_heavy werewolf I read a very interesting story today in torts. It involved two friends who sometime in 1967 went to a trailer park to return a car one of the friends had borrowed from a third friend. While waiting for that friend to get off of work, the two friends drank some beers. As is want to happen in this little world of billiard balls, a collision was in the making, when two girls walked by the entrance to the trailer park. The two men sought to engage the girls in conversation. The girls continued walking to a restaurant down the street and the men left the car and followed. At the restaurant the girls complained to their friends that they were being followed. The age of the two men (though they were driving and then drinking beer) was not given, but the 6 friends who came to the "rescue" of the girls were described as boys. One of the two men got away, but the other was beaten severely. Later the man returned and found his friend lying underneath his car, his head bleeding. He iced his head, and placed him in the back seat of the car. His friend fell asleep. The man then proceeded to drive around for two hours to various drive-through restaurants. Later he drove the car to the house of his friend's grandparents and tried to rouse him. When this failed, he left him there in the car. The next day they found him in the car and immediately took him to the hospital. He died three days later of an epidurmal hemotoma. It was stated by doctors that he would've had an 85 or so chance of survival had he been administered to by a doctor within or around thirty minutes of the incident. The legal issue was whether or not moral obligations and legal obligations coincided in this case. That is to say whether there was in this situation a duty owed which the two implicitly created in their joint social venture in which they could expect from one another some stewardship in the case some harm came to one of them, to the degree where it would be a duty and a necessary burden to surrender some of the liberties of a free society and act to protect one another even if it meant inconvenience. The court found that such a relationship did exist prior to the injury, and especially once the first man took the role of a rescuer by icing his head. He then had the duty to act as someone in that role reasonably would. But what's interesting about this case is the people involved. Suddenly the villain is the man who failed to act on common sense. But that's exactly the case. To drive around with your friend bleeding in back is either malicious or foolish. And he already from the sparse facts of this case seems somewhat ineffectual. He's at a trailer park drinking beer, and he is so awkward in his attempts to talk to these girls that the boys chase him and his friends. And what of these boys? They beat a man to a point he would not recover from in the absence of medical intervention. And yet the onus is on the friend, because of the duty of a friend as opposed to the duty of a fellow human being. This seems a very tragic case to me. To drive around seems a desire to run away from it, hope the burden will be lifted by the same hands you forfeit all other responsibilities to. It seems that the only faith this man has in himself is the meager ability to be provided with fast-food for money. And he immediately seeks out for comfort those events which make him feel empowered. It would seem having this burden of another life on his hands is just a reminder of how heavy his own existence is, how ill-equipped he must feel he is for it, how much he wants to be left alone to that which is certain and easy and comforting. I mean, can you driving to not one but multiple fast food restaurants with your friend in the back seat hemmoraging? Did he buy him something on the hopes he'd wake up? I can just see it...."come on man, wake up...i got you something..." and then later "are you going to eat that? ....bleed out of your head if you want me to eat it instead" I don't know if I can articulate the demonstration this case is of the essential isolation and yet also weight we feel from other people. The absurdity of them both being all that matters, and yet also so outside of us, so at the most extreme levels inconsequential, a tugging at our brain that at times weighs far less than hunger, or the desire to just go home. 040914 ... somebody very interesting. sad and humorous all at once. bizarre. 080926 what's it to you? who go blather from