True Conflict: Bad Choices, Bad Scenarios

This is the second part of a series about failures in end-to-end analysis. Part 1 is here.

In the prior post, we talked about levels of conflict, from the accident to the failure of thinking through all the ramifications of the problem before a character and the consequences of mistakes. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is interesting. Royally screwing the pooch, now that will generate conflict.

Let me give you, the writer, and example of an intense, and all too-real, end-to-end scenario.  Here in Hack Writerville, we deal in reality. And sometimes, reality is a real bitch.

Setup: In this scenario, you are pretending to be me, Anthony, but let’s call you Chuck and give you one child instead of two. At the end of this scenario is a question. It is a yes/no question, and is not an ethics question, but rather a logic question. From a logic standpoint, there is a correct answer, and a wrong answer.

Scenario: You struggle to park your car for a dinner rendezvous with some friends. You are alone and not with your family. You finally find a parking space away from your destination but not far enough where you need to take a bus to get to the front door. It’s a pay lot squished off to the side with plenty of spaces.

You close the door and lock the car, and notice someone is approaching you. You realize, too late, that this is an isolated place to park your car. The person approaching you is a white male, who looks like a tweaker—scabs on face, dirty clothes, etc. Far from feeling sympathy, you feel danger.

Since you, the writer, are pretending to be me, as Chuck, you need to know at this point that Chuck is armed. Chuck carries a sidearm, and, as trained, you move away from your danger by moving to the back of the car.

The tweaker follows you. We are heading down a path of escalation, and in seconds we have gone from a heighten sense of danger to the possibility that this person is up to no good.

“What do you want?” you ask, while you still move. Indeed, Chuck is a bit of clever at this point. As long as you are moving at the same speed as this person of interest, you merely have to circle the car. If they follow you around the car, then, as they say, it’s on.

He doesn’t, but you place your hand on your sidearm anyway.

That’s when you notice the other man walking towards you, grinning. You cannot play round robin with two assailants. He has his hand in his coat, and this second bad guy is pulling something out of it.

“Give me your fucking wallet and keys or we’re going to kill you!”

It’s on.

Do you draw and engage the felons, or do you hand over the wallet and keys? There is a very real possibility that you, as a marksman trained in the art of self-defense, will kill one or both of these men before they lose the will to fight. There is also the distinct possibility that you will be shot. Question: Is keeping your wallet and car keys worth killing two men?

The answer is below the line. Before you go there, however, be warned this scenario is not something I pulled out of my butt to prove a point about self-defense. This is a study in end-to-end analysis. Re-read the entire scenario again, make your choice, and click.

As I stated this was a logic and not ethics scenario. Question: Is keeping your wallet and car keys worth killing two men?

The logical answer is yes. The illogical answer is no.

If we bring morality into play, despite what I said, the moral choice is to engage the felons. The immoral choice is to hand over your wallet and car keys.

Why is that?

Consider the scenario end-to-end.

Let’s say you handed over the wallet and keys but decided that if they didn’t point any weapons at you, you would not engage. You’ve heard that resistance is bad, giving up, not so bad.

Well you heard wrong. That is a lie repeated by many people who do not know anything about resistance to violent criminals, or worse, with an agenda for lying. But, ultimately, has nothing to do with this scenario.

Inside your wallet, is your identification. It also contains money, the ATM card and the credit card. These cards and money are nothing. They are not worth blood. So, let’s have poor Chuck hand the wallet over, if that was your choice.

Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuk, you fucked the pooch, Chuck. Your driver’s license is blood. Literally. It has your home address. Where your wife and daughter live.

Here, in the wrong answer path, you’ve made two fatal errors. The first was thinking that non-resistance was going to pay off. That is excusable because that is what we, as a society, are fed by lesser men and women. It is still an error, but it is excusable.

The second mistake is inexcusable. You assumed these sociopaths thought like you. You thought, if you were a mugger, that you would take the wallet and car and call it a day.

That is how a normal person who pretends to be a criminal thinks. It has no basis in reality. A sociopath does not think like a normal person. If they were normal people they would not be mugging and carjacking you!

You’re dead Chuck. You hand over the car keys and wallet and they shoot you. Your hand left your firearm to give over the stuff, you cleared leather in your moment of horror but the felon behind you popped you one in the back of the head.

Your failure, even though you are dead, does not end there Chuck. Oh no. These two bad guys, with your wallet, get in your car, and drive to your address.

That you gave them.

They pull into the garage; it opens automatically for them with the clicker. They close the garage door, just like Daddy does when he gets home. The door to the house is unlocked, but even if it was, they have your keys.

That you gave them.

They find your daughter and wife at home. They rape them both. All night. At 3:00am, they tie them up, each to their own bed, and set the house on fire. The wife and daughter die from smoke inhalation before the flames reach them, a small consolation  to the torturous night of terror they went through. In sprit, they died much earlier. Your daughter lies there looking at the flames as they approach. Her eyes are dead. She is looking forward to the pain, the ending.

The police? They find your dead body, but it has no ID. The only other way they can find out who you are is by your car, and well, that’s gone. Because you gave two sociopaths your car keys. Your wife and daughter’s only hope is someone witnessed the deed and called the 911. But that didn’t happen.

Congratulations Chuck, you are the worse father, ever. You’re going to Hell, and for what?

You failed to see the over-reaching ramifications.

If you picked the wrong answer, this is a classic, and all too real, example of mistakes in logic as it applies to the real world. You could argue my scenario is not realistic. You would be wrong. An encounter with a violent felon is not the lottery. This has happened before. It will happen again.

I bring this up not to be in your face about self-defense, although, sadly, this scenario is based on true life events. This conflict is a prime example of the world as it is vs. the world as people think it is. If you picked the wrong answer, I do not fault you, although I would encourage you to obtain a better self-defense outlook that includes your family’s safety and well-being, not just your own. It is easy to fall into a trap, as Good and Godly men and women, of wishing we were in better times.

But we are not, and there are things you do not roll the dice for, ever.

And that is conflict. Failure, from a far-reaching standpoint, is the ultimate conflict. This scenario is but one example. It is easy to think of others. Examining your personal biases and playing logic versus ethics can generate the gut-wrenching conflict, especially if the totality of the situation is not fully analyzed.

Let’s go back to Chuck.

What if Chuck didn’t die? It is likely that Chuck could live to get to a hospital. But he wakes up several days later after surgery.

When he finds out what happens, Chuck, the man inside, dies. What replaces Chuck? What fills the void? Does he go on a murderous rampage, with the memory of his daughter’s smile and his wife’s easy laugh forever tainted by their night of doom? Does a god of vengeance answer his prayers, and they trade a soul for a chance at redemption coated in blood? Or is Chuck literally haunted by his dead family, two banshees who terrorize him until he has suffered as they?

Or does Chuck, realizing he is a colossal failure, just shoot himself in the head and wind up in Hell?

Yeah, now that’s conflict! End-to-end. Think about it.