That was definitely my gut reaction. I immediately thought of the people who didn’t have citizenship. And while @anothernewbbaccount jokes about a wave of toddler-dangling, the idea that undocumented people might be given extra incentive to put themselves at risk to save others is perverse.
I doubt the French immigration system is anything I’d like, and I doubt that they treat non-citizens well at all. That’s awful.
I am concerned about a president handing out citizenship as a reward in general. Though, honestly, I’m even more concerned about the job offer as a firefighter. Presidents definitely shouldn’t influence that hiring process. Being a firefighter isn’t a superhero fantasy. I’m sure there are firefighters out there rolling their eyes. I’m not saying that Gassama couldn’t make a good firefighter, but if you going to hand out jobs for good deeds maybe check first if he’d rather have a job as an accountant.
So I can’t help but see the rotten world we actually live in when I look at this story, but I think this is a good story from that world.
I think our normal way of talking about people exaggerates how much they act based on Pavlovian conditioning and thinks too much about how things play subconsciously. Gassama scaled the outside of a building to save a kid’s life because 1) they, like most people, care about the lives of children they’ve never met; and 2) they, unlike most people, can traverse the side of building like it was flat ground. Macron offered Gassama citizenship presumably because of a gut reaction that any nation would want citizens like this.
It probably also has a positive effect on the country and the world in general. Sure people are able to neatly compartmentalize the heroism of one person from their distrust of a group of people, but I think it probably moves the needle in the right direction.
One thing they emphasized in CPR training was that when you tell someone to call 911, don’t yell, “Someone call 911!”, instead, point at a specific person and say, “You! Call 911!” In emergencies most people just don’t act.
