Ray Ducharme, according to the AP reports on Friday, July 7, may be paralyzed for life because he went to Pamplona, Spain to run with the bulls. At the end of the first of eight days of bull running he was stepped on by a cow he was taunting in a bullring at the end of the day. As with all people who do dangerous things for fun and then get hurt, my prayers go out to Ray for a full recovery of both his spine and his good judgment.
The most hilarious report from the Pamplona Press as reported by the AP was this: “There has been an effort in recent years to teach runners how to stay safe, including instructions to stay down after a fall rather than trying to stand up amid the charging animals.” How about the ultimate safety instruction—STAY HOME! And by the way, thanks to the immortal Ernest Hemingway for romanticizing this macho insanity in his 1926 novel, “The Sun Also Rises.”
Before the report from Pamplona of Ducharme’s injury, we were told about a high-profile incident of another man doing stupid and dangerous things for fun: Ben Roethlisberger’s motorcycle injury. Big Ben is the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers and a few weeks ago he wiped out when his crotch rocket hit or was hit by a nice elderly couple probably out for a drive to get a new Scrabble Dictionary. Ben is lucky to be alive, though his face apparently was badly smashed. Time will tell the extent and consequences of his injuries. I also hope Ben recovers the full use of his body and his head and his brain. Ben’s injuries were also much more severe than they would have been, had he been wearing a helmet. Pennyslvania has no mandatory helmet law.
What can we learn from the general issue of a person’s right to have really dangerous fun? The first philosophical/ethical issue is paternalism. Obviously there are clear ethical limits to what we can decide to do that put other people in danger. Base jumping off the Empire State Building is both illegal and immoral because of the danger posed to innocent bystanders. However, what is the moral calculus of an act that only imperils us personally? “Why,” the libertarians scream, “is it the state’s business if I want to ride without a helmet? It’s my life, it’s my head, and it’s what’s left of my brains. Leave me alone! For the state to pass laws limiting what I can do with or to my own body is paternalism. It is a kind of ‘Father knows best’ attitude that is both condescending and morally indefensible.”
What is the proper response to this initially compelling libertarian argument? One could argue that there is no such thing as a purely self-regarding act. Our life and death affects many people, and in Ben’s case, a really good football team, so the idea that he was alone on that bike is a myth.
Religious people, like me, would argue that God owns your body and you are just sort of renting it for the duration of your life and you are thus no more entitled to risk your life than you are entitled to pound nail holes into the walls of a rented apartment.
A bronze bust of Hemingway stands outside the bullring in Pamplona, Spain. No one knows what the frozen bust of such a writer was doing at such an altitude. Some people say (okay its just me) that Hemingway’s lips are sculpted into the position of saying something like this, “Hey, I was only kidding. It was a joke! Running through narrow streets in front of bulls with big horns? What are you, nuts?”
