Bad Responses to an Accidental Harm
Suppose that you accidentally bump into someone, which causes her to fall and sustain a deep cut. There’s a lot of blood. The situation’s serious, and you’re the only one who’s in a position to help. Putting aside the question of your possible negligence, your lack of a bad intention absolves you of any wrongdoing with respect to this injury—you have not yet done anything wrong. However, you might still wrong the injured person by what you do next. E.g. to respond in any of the following ways would be to do something wrong:
A. You don’t want to get blood on you, or you’re running late to meet up with friends, so you ignore the person’s pleas for help and walk away. (Psychopathic/antisocial/narcissistic response.)
B. You feel guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed for having caused the injury. Rather than accept these feelings and deal with them by helping in any way you can, you push the bad feelings aside by ignoring the person’s pleas for help, walking away, and pretending that none of it ever happened. (Narcissistic response.)
C. You think the injury is her own fault, because she wasn’t looking where she was going. It’s not your problem. Since it’s her fault, she should have to deal with the injury on her own. After all, when has anyone ever helped you? Perhaps you even feel contempt or disgust for the injured person, for being so stupid and fragile as to fall over and be cut in the first place. With no hint of guilt, you ignore her pleas and walk away. As you do so, perhaps you also tell her to shut the fuck up, have some dignity, or quit her insufferable whinging. (Psychopathic/antisocial/ narcissistic response.)
D. You think the person’s somehow faking the injury, just to make you feel bad about yourself, or to control you or interfere with your plans in some way. You think that you’ve seen through this deception, so you ignore the person’s pleas and walk away. Perhaps you shame her or lash out at her as you do so. (Narcissistic and/or paranoid response. If the response is paranoid in a fully psychotic manner, then it might not constitute a wrong.)
E. In addition to A or B, you also threaten the person, gag and bind her, knock her unconscious, or kill her so that no one will learn of your involvement or of your subsequent refusal to help. (Psychopathic/antisocial/narcissistic response.)
F. In addition to A or B, you launch a smear campaign by spreading misinformation about the injured person, or by lying about the nature of the event, either so that no one will believe that you contributed to causing the injury, so that no one will believe that you subsequently refused to help, so that your refusal to help appears justified or understandable, or so that your overall involvement in the situation is otherwise viewed in a more favourable light. (Narcissistic response.)