What makes a Gentleman

Let's take a not very uncommon situation. You are walking down a street and you find two people fighting over something. Getting curious you come closer and start listening to their conversation. You figure out that one of them is an agent of some insurance company and the other is his client. The agent is trying to take advantage of the client over some issue about which the latter doesn't seem to have proper knowledge. Now you are in a similar profession and you comprehend how the agent is trying to deceive the client. To make it more clear and simple, let me put it this way : You can explain the whole scenario to the client in less than five minutes and this will save him from being deluded. What do you do?

Well, I feel most of us would do the following in such a situation. We would first get tempted to speak a few words. But then suddenly something from within stops us. We come to realize that what good it would serve by getting into others' matter? I was happily walking down the street when I saw this fight. Though I was curious to know what was going on, having found it out and having had my share of "entertainment" its time for me to walk on. Let the poor client be duped by the agent. How does it make a difference to me?. I know I won't be duped in a similar manner. So what's the point in getting into an argument?

By this try to present an idealist picture of ourselves. We say that, I am a person who never indulges in any kind of trouble, I lead a simple life, I am happy with whatever I am and so on. But do we ever think that being an idealist or to be more precise being "simple" in a way amounts to being selfish? Yes, this might be an exaggeration but the above situation might put this in a better perspective.

Of course we need to be protective about ourselves but that doesn't mean we should hide our selfishness with talks of idealism. If you tend to move away or turn a deaf ear towards the problems around you and in your society, you are simply a coward. You can't justify your actions (non-actions actually) by saying that you are a gentleman who doesn't like to get into a chaos. If that does define being a gentleman, then this world would be better off without such gentlemen. Our society is hardly going to gain anything from them.