People say New York City feels like it did in the 1970s, when crime was so rampant that children were mugged on their way to school. Yet there is an important difference: Then, when you were victimized, society was on your side; now, you are on your own.

Of all the lessons in being street-savvy that I teach my teenagers, the most important one is to assume that no one is coming to help you if you get into trouble. 

If someone were to attack my child on the street, I believe there is a better chance of the event being recorded than stopped. If the assailant is a wild-eyed mentally ill man, or an erratic drug addict, most onlookers will consider their personal safety before my child’s and resist stepping in. If the attacker is a member of a “protected” class, I believe most people will think twice, and then three times, before intervening. 

It is difficult to blame those who have been systematically conditioned to avoid conflicts that society has redefined in socio-political terms to serve narratives rather than citizens. Everyone is forced to do a cost-benefit analysis on behavior that used to come naturally to most decent people — defending the innocent. 

A policeman who can be personally sued for conduct during an arrest has to factor his mortgage payments into his decision to do his duty. A store manager trying to prevent theft has to consider the p.r. implications of posting a uniformed guard at its door. People are afraid to act, and for good reason. We have made them afraid.

This brings us to Daniel Penny, the 24-year-old who knew all of this, and who tried to help anyway. When an erratic, menacing homeless man began threatening his safety, and that of others trapped on a subway car with him, the former Marine took action. He had the kind of training suited to a moment like this, and the kind of character that directed him to try to help, rather than try to calculate how he might help himself. Also, Mr. Penny, together with those who assisted him, knew what we all know: No one was coming to help them.

It ended tragically, but something had to be done. Bad outcomes don’t necessarily indicate that bad decisions were made. Sometimes you make the right decision, and you get a terrible result. That may be the definition of tragedy. 

Daniel Penny astonishes me. He is the guy I told my kids not to wait around for if they found themselves face to face with danger, precisely because I didn’t believe he existed. In the aftermath of Jordan Neely’s death, I fear that what I told my children will be all the more true — no one is coming to help them. The one who did so was handcuffed and charged with second degree manslaughter. How many other young men are signing up for that potential fate the next time your elderly mother is accosted on the street? 

People on subways should not have to be sealed into a speeding metal container with violent, unwell recidivists and offered no recourse if things get ugly. Yet this happens almost every day. Daniel Penny was the recourse for the passengers facing Neely’s rage — the only one those people were going to get in a city we have allowed to deteriorate so shamefully. 

Jordan Neelys abound on our streets and below ground. Everyone knows they aren’t getting the help they need, and neither are we when they unleash on us. We all have to fend for ourselves. 

Daniel Penny did exactly that. Look where it got him. Look where it gets us all.