Eine_Frau,
I, for one, value your contributions to this board. Your post earlier today was particularly poignant as it came from the heart. It is not easy to watch violence come to an otherwise peaceful and beautiful city, and it is natural to wonder what you would do when confronted by the wolf. More on why I say “wolf” shortly.
We are all very relieved that you were not there, and isn’t it ironic that something as simple as a puppy might have made the difference? What would you have done if you were there? You would have done everything in your power to protect your son. In this type of situation that might amount little more than seeing yourselves through the nearest exit. Fortunately, it did not come to that. Nor did you need to discover the lengths a cornered mother will go to protect her child. This is where the average person learns they, too, have a bit of the sheepdog in them.
You referenced “sheeple” in your post. If you’ve read enough here on PS.com you probably realized many of us here subscribe to the analogy that there are three types of people: sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves. I won’t go into great detail describing each since the original source did it better than I ever could:
On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs
In a nutshell, sheep are the average citizens, sheepdogs are the protectors—military, police, first responders, and wolves are the bad guys from petty criminals to terrorists. The Munich police, the Bundespolizei, GSG-9, and paramedics are all sheepdogs and behaved as such. The shooter was obviously the wolf. Everyone else simply going about their business when the shooting started were the sheep.
If you read LTC Grossman’s article, you’ll see there is nothing wrong with being a sheep. Where we on this board, sheepdogs, take issue is when the sheep, vastly outnumbering the lone wolf, meekly await their turn to be slaughtered. We’ve seen it here in our own country. A killer comes into a college classroom (
Oregon, 02 OCT 2015) and those inside curl up on the floor and wait to die. To us, this is madness. Even the sheep must find the sheepdog inside at a moment like this and overwhelm the wolf.
You will see the QPs on this site talk about things like Situational Awareness and being “switched on”. These are concepts we live by and we want more people to do so as well. This is a necessary first step in becoming less sheep-like.
We understand that evil exists and bad things happen to good people. When the wolf comes, I just think more good people should take an active role in deciding the outcome.