Woman on a bicycle

A couple of days ago I was walking towards the train station after work. It was around 9pm but it was still not very dark. As I was walking I heard someone saying in a nervous-sounding voice: "Excuse me!!" It was a woman on a bycicle and she was saying this to an other woman walking just behind me. The pavement was wide, there weren't many people there walking but the bycicle woman wanted to cycle in the middle of it and anyone in her way had to get out. The other woman looked surprised. She didn't know why someone was talking to her like this, and neither did I, though I got out of the way as soon as I heard the cyclist from a reasonably long distance. When she passed us she arrived at a man who walked in the middle of the pavement and had at least one metre space on either side of him. Yet the cyclist said again - this time more loudly - "Excuse me!!" The man reacted differently from the previous woman and from me. He told the cyclist off, told her to use the road instead, which was not too crowded either. The cyclist yelled back, he said something else and after a couple of rounds like this the woman finally passed the man. Now both of them seemed angry and frustrated.

I started thinking: was any of us reacting 'correctly'? What should I have done to increase the harmony level in the street? Could I, or any of the people involved, have improved the situation considerably? I still don't know but here's what I was thinking about.

As I wasn't directly involved in the situation (I got out of the way early) I'll start with the reactions of the woman and the man. The woman was surprised and she let the possibly drunk cyclist go through by stepping out of her way. This is level one self defence, as Connor would put it. He got out of the line of 'attack' and the cyclist could continue her less than harmonious way to the junk food restaurant. Could her reaction be considered aiki? Probably not, because it didn't involve blending and leading, and if I had been in the walking woman's place I would probably have said to myself 'what a stupid cow!'. Now, I wasn't in the cyclist's way, but I still think a bit that way. So although we both avoided the attack I would say we could be damaged in a way. I'm still not at the level where I can simply let things like this go. Maybe it's my ego or maybe it's that I can simply see that the situation did not improve and something should have been done to make things better.

Was it anyone's responsibility to act proactively? There wasn't any serious physical danger but all the people walking in the street were distracted.

Is it the right solution to just let 'idiots' go, to get out of their way and just observe until something really damaging happens?

Or, is it the better way to confront the 'attacker' and tell them to act responsibly? Should we punish them? The man reacted in an other level of self defence which Connor will not likely to mention as Aikido Self Defence. The man attacked back, which created an even stronger counterattack from the cyclist. The man said something rude again and there was a scene in the street within seconds. Fire with fire didn't work, it just created even bigger fire. Without getting out and blending you can be clever or rude, I don't think it will work on any drunken cyclist. On the other hand, I think his intentions were right: something had to be done. He just didn't choose the reaction that worked.

When I first heard "Excuse me!!" and looked at the woman who has just stepped out of the way I thought "but the cyclist got away with it! We shouldn't just stand and watch others behaving destructively!", so I thought "something should be done. I could use my aikido skills and knock her off her bicycle, even do a bicycledori iriminage." These were just my usual daydreams of being a 'superhero'. Then I saw how the man reacted and I thought "It would have probably been a pretty bad idea to punish the cyclist for her antisocial behaviour." And that was the point where I started to think about the balance between just observing disturbed people and punishing them for behaving irresponsibly.

The observation side is one thing that sometimes happens exclusively, i.e. without any of the punishment side, in the world as I can see it at the moment. You have to wait until someone shoots you to be able to use any active self defence, and even when you pin them down they can sue you for using excessive amount of force. Also, this 'observation only' happens when you can't tell kids in the street (or in the school) to stop shouting, littering and who knows what because they have rights and they will attack back (and you can't do a lot about it as they are usually in groups), or they report you to the police, or their parents come to school and try to make your life as hard as they can.

The punishment only side is similarly present and it is a similarly bad idea I think. Think about Guantanamo Bay. I'm not sure how much observation was involved before taking people there but I'm sure there was hell of a lot of punishment afterwards. Or think about the story of a kid playing with a toy gun. The policeman punished him without observation, and the kid got a bullet into his chest.

So there's either no real balance in certain situations of life or there is not enough blending (aka. understanding, listening, empathy, etc.) to try to arrive at a win-win situation, or to resolve the conflict somehow. It would take flexibility of thinking which most of us could not perfect so far, and some of the people don't even attempt to try. Flexibility can be achieved and maintained only with practice whether it's muscle flexibility or flexibility of thinking.

Getting away should be the first step (probably that's why Connor calls it level 1) and I should probably have talked to the cyclist if I felt so uncomfortable about the situation. Maybe I should have used NVC which I sometimes call verbal aikido. I should have tried to find out why she was behaving like this, why was she drunk and what could have been done to help her to behave 'regularly' again. Maybe she had some family issues or was fired from here workplace; I will never know. Nevetheless, I believe we could have arrived at a harmonious situation. But then, should/can we have someone skilled in some psychological practices standing in every corner of the city? That would be overcontrolling, just as many things and processes are already overcontrolled.

Commanding others ("Go to the road, b*tch!") rarely works, and it only works in the military because the commanded side knows and accepts in advance that they are to be commanded. I couldn't be a soldier. I simply can't be commanded unless I have at least a reasonably vague idea of why I should follow what others say. I might have attacked back differently from the cyclist but telling me what to do when I'm frustrated rarely leads to me happily doint what I was told to.

I'm sure many people will disagree with me in at least some of the points above. Please let me know your thoughts so we can get to the blending phase somehow and eventually end up in the middle way, having learnt something from each other.