day of the Triffids - Inspired by a conversation with twicedead

[davywavy]

Oh no! It's the end of civilisation! The Triffids have risen up and overrun the earth and the necrophagic vegetables are devouring people like it's going out of fashion. You are one of the lucky ones. You are holed up in a safe location with large stocks of food and weaponry and as safe from the Triffids as can be.
One day, a survivor shows up at your stockade and through the kindness of your heart you take him in to protect him from said carniverous cucumbers. However, it quickly turns out that this survivor is a wrong 'un and he's not changing his ways, either - not only does he sneer and spit and call you names, but he also beats up and molests your missus and steals some of your valuable food supplies and clean water. What do you do?

[Poll #730506]

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The really saintly thing to do would be to turn the other cheek, take the abuse without complaint, and if he steals from you, give him the food as a gift (as in this (http://education.yahoo.com/homework_help/cliffsnotes/les_miserables/8.html) famous story).

I wonder how many people could actually do this, though?

There's a rather sneering anecdote by Martin Amis in "The Moronic Inferno" in which Amis reports going to watch the performance of an American evangelical preacher. "You hit me, and I'll turn the other cheek. But you hit my wife or kids, boy, and I'll put you on the floor." Amis presents this as rather contemptible, but for the life of me I still can't see why. It seems a perfectly practicable moral code to me.

H