A young man jumps off a cliff but Dominic Flandry runs, grabs him by the ankle and pulls him back up. Flandry's motivation is simply to save a life. In any case, he does not have time to reflect and to think of any other motive. Next, since the young man, Djuanda, has not eaten for while, Flandry invites him to join him for breakfast. Now the social as opposed to the merely physical issues arise. Djuanda is too proud to beg. Flandry insists that he is not offering charity. That is precisely what he is doing and why should he not? How has "charity" of all things become worthy of contempt? Djuanda should accept food that he needs when it is offered and later, maybe, hope not to pay Flandry back but to "pay forward," to do for someone else what Flandry is now doing for him. However, having saved Djuanda's physical life, Flandry must now address the younger man's sense of self-worth. So Flandry says that he wants to feed the younger man so that the latter can talk rationally so that he, Flandry, can learn whether Djuanda is the right man to hire for a certain job!
Obviously all this did not go through Flandry's mind before he ran to grab an ankle. And, equally obviously, Flandry will not throw Djuanda back over the cliff if he does not find him employable! But Flandry helps Djuanda, and will possibly in return receive some needed help from him, by treating their interaction as that between a prospective employer and a potential employee. Human beings complicate simple matters.
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