Not the kind of help he needed

A man stood ready to jump off a bridge in southern China, despondent and ready to end it all. But not so ready that he didn’t pause at the last minute.

Which prompted another man watching him to step up and…help.

Chen Fuchao, a man heavily in debt, had been contemplating suicide on a bridge in southern China for hours when a passer-by came up, shook his hand — and pushed him off the ledge.

Fortunately, he didn’t die. But what the heck was that about?

The passer-by, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng, had been fed up with what he called Chen’s ”selfish activity,” Xinhua said. Traffic around the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.

”I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest,” Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. ”They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to their appeals.”

This concept of the “public interest” is not just a Communist state mentality. Here’s a ‘what’s wrong with the picture?’ snapshot of a creeping utilitarian society. In law and social policy, when we create the “right” to not suffer, this is what happens by logical extension.