Survival of the friendliest
I am sitting with the image of a woman I saw earlier this week, dressed in black trainer pants and a cloak, light brown complexion, hair hidden under a hoodie, around 28 years old. She sat down in the road. Not by the road. In the road. Just sat. This road cuts through the Indian reservation. At first the cars ahead of me hooted, then put on hazard lights and one driver got out. Cautiously.
She turned her back on him and then inched her way deeper inside her hoodie and to the curb. The cars moved on.
Police cars raged in. Traffic halted now both ways. I am at the front of the line, high in my cabin. The strapping young police officer approaches her with a mask and bright blue gloves. The older stocky officer holds up traffic, placing his hands strategically on his laden belt.
Remember civics 101 the great debate, Hobbes versus Rousseau. Hobbs' people believe that under the veneer of civil manners and social etiquette lies the monster, the real you. They write books like Lord of the Flies and insist that, left to our own devices, our lives are 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'? Then there is the more generous view of our species (Rousseau you noble savage!) proposing that we are essentially a friendly if amoral species, that owning land and settling down messed with our agreeable and curious nature. Either way we needed a social contract to keep us safe from our neighbors' darker side and suited up an enforcer to rein us in if we are in breach.
So the officer with the gloves moves gingerly closer to her. She is not looking at him. “Are you from here? Someone in the tribe you know?”
I hear her saying “I just need some space”,
“Where are you going? Who can I call?” he asks her. Something so compassionate about the officer, allowing her to move as she will, not pushing or rushing. Something noble about the burly white officer too, with his bulging bullet proof jacket, ready to support his partner if anything goes wrong, while keeping traffic at bay. The social workers' vehicle speeds to a halt. “I am her auntie” shouts the woman walking officiously from the car. “She has never been this bad before. Not her actual auntie but that's what we are to her. I know her. We heard she was sitting in the road.”
I happen to follow this conversation from the cab. And the burly officer asks “But did either of you see her sitting in the road? I believe you are telling the truth but I cannot take away her liberty on hearsay.”
The aunties are agitated, “But she may come to harm, she could cause an accident, she might hurt herself.” The woman turns her back on the aunties. She looks up at me and then slinks away along the side of the truck, down the road. “I just need some space to clear my head” she murmurs.
“I cannot take her liberty away on hearsay.” Wow. That is so fundamental to the world I choose to live in. Yet I drove off with a heavy heart as she disappeared in my side mirror. The enforcement of rule of law is designed for that severe Hobbesian world that we've imagined into being. But we do not live in an Hieronymus Bosch seven deadly sins painting. Anyone witness to the incident of the-woman-who-sat-in-the-road will know this. Drivers late for their next work shift watched on patiently, frustrated social workers advocate for their person, standby firefighters and police held space.
That sargeants dilemma kept gnawing on me. Protect the individual's rights or her well being? Act on reasonable projections or go home? We all dress up and then embody our roles as road crew, social workers, truckers, and officers of the law. Underneath the dress up, I want to believe we conceal a bedrock of caring and love, yes love, for the broken and lost in all of us. Was his duty to the law – there are no grounds for intervention here, or to his better self – I see a woman in need and have the resources to help her?
This is a story fragment. Don't know if she is safe and cared for or locked up. Perhaps she just kept walking and is finding her way. I really know nothing about her. But I am grateful to her. Grateful for reminding me that I want to live in a world where the survival of the friendliest makes more sense than survival of the fittest.
