The Copenhagen Trap: How the West made passivity the only safe strategy

Summary

The Copenhagen Trap How the West made passivity the only safe strategy I. The Paradox You watch someone drown. You do nothing. Legally: no liability. Morally: "tragic, but not your fault." You try to save them. You fail. They die anyway. Legally: potential liability for negligent rescue. Morally: "why didn't you do it properly?" You try to save them. You succeed, but break their rib doing CPR. Legally: they can sue you. Morally: "was that level of force really necessary?" The structure is clear: interaction creates liability; detachment creates immunity. The safest move is always to walk away. This essay traces how this asymmetry emerged, how it became encoded into Western institutions, and why it now functions as a civilizational selection mechanism against agency itself. II. The Ancient Baseline It wasn't always this way. Roman law focused on actus reus—the guilty act. Jurists found it conceptually difficult to assign causation to a non-event. For an omission to be punishable, it required a pre-existing specific duty, usually derived from paternal authority or contractual obligation. The baseline presumption: the law punishes the sword stroke, not the failure to use the shield. But this asymmetry was held in check by countervailing forces. Honor cultures punished inaction in defense of kin as social death. Feudal obligations created webs of positive duties—a vassal owed consilium et auxilium to his lord; a knight who failed castle-guard had breached fealty. Canon law held that omission could be sinful, keeping alive the concept that inaction carries moral weight. Noblesse oblige meant the powerful were obligated to act; inaction was shameful, not safe. The asymmetry existed in embryonic form, but it was contained by duties that made passivity costly. III. The Common Law Crystallization English Common Law hardened the asymmetry into rigid doctrine. The key case: Hurley v. Eddingfield (1901). A physician refused to travel to treat a dying patient, despite being the ...