“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” — François de La Rochefoucauld

On the morning of March 26, while most people were just getting another droning workday started, a man was struck by a train off Whipple Street in Lewiston.

The scene of the wreck held some clues.

Over there was a bunch of random clothes strewn in the weeds. Not far away was a wheeled baby stroller with a bright red backpack sitting where the baby is supposed to go.

Suppositions were made from the very start that the victim was a homeless man who somehow crossed paths with rolling tons of hard steel and the results, for most, could only be imagined.

And what followed those suppositions on social media were not mainly thoughts and prayers, this time around, but mirth and derision.

Whomever it was lying mangled and unconscious beneath that boxcar had made the mistake of suffering the wrong kind of life-changing injury.

“Really hard not to laugh,” offered one man, on one of many Facebook threads to unspool about the accident.

“Stop breaking the law!” suggested one middle-age man who would have us believe he never once in his life walked along a set of train tracks.

More than a few declared the mangled man a potential winner of the Darwin Award, commonly described as “a satirical honor bestowed upon those who improve the human gene pool by dying.”

There were best wishes and promises of prayer scattered here and there among the hundreds of comments offered about the situation, but those words were easy to miss.

The bulk of the commentary on Thursday and Friday were of the variety that suggested the man under the train had got what was coming to him.

“Natural selection,” one man quipped, in a way that suggested he thought the line to be original and quite hilarious.

“A lack of brains may be involved here,” advised another saintly soul whom we can presume has never done one inadvisable thing his whole, long life.

A few turned the whole affair into a lousy stand-up comedy act.

“Is the train okay?” one fellow wanted to know.

“The train operator should have stopped to let the pedestrian cross,” cracked another.

On and on it went, a barrage of wisecracks and general merriment as the victim lay in a hospital bed, barely alive.

This great show of sanctimony didn’t slow at all when a relative of the injured man weighed in with shock and revulsion at what she was reading.

“This is my nephew,” the older lass wrote, “and I would hope people would pray for him instead of negative comments …”

She scolded the kangaroo court and advised them to grow up. She demanded that the chortling masses imagine that this had happened to their own brother or son or nephew, but there was no sign that her sad appeals landed with any significant impact.

The eye-rolling scorn and knee-slapping hilarity went on and on because who deserves anything more than that if he is dumb enough to go toe-to-toe with a moving train?

I can see the temptation to laugh it off, of course. We consider ourselves responsible and intelligent people, after all, who are so far above the kind of stupidity required to get into this kind of trouble that it’s just too damn hard to relate. And if you can’t relate even in a tiny way, how can we summon empathy?

But not me, bros. I sympathized with the wounded man from the start because personally, I don’t feel I’m above anyone at all, and if I’m honest, I’ll admit that only blind luck has protected me from this variety of life-changing calamity.

As a younger man, I used to hitch trains regularly, and often after swilling a few beers with the boys out in the woods along the train tracks. We’d jump from boxcar to boxcar with growing bravado, seeking to earn the admiration of our friends through flagrant boneheadery.

“Look at me, dawgs! No hands!”

There was a time in my life when I’d drink so much, I’d pass out in places not generally considered safe and secure from the kind of disasters just waiting to befall a drunken, reckless man.

I’ve done some truly dumb things in my day — “Hold my beer” kind of things — and I’d bet the last buck in my wallet that the yuksters cracking wise about the train accident have done so, as well.

Why am I still walking around with two arms and two legs, while this guy remains in a hospital bed tethered to tubes and medical gizmos?

Beats me, Jack. The grace of God? Blessings from the universe? Just plain dumb luck?

I generally have a rule where if I won’t laugh into another man’s face directly, I won’t laugh at him elsewhere. And I think most people were that way until social media came along and gave us a place to spew forth like tittering 9-year-olds from the safe comfort of our living rooms.

I understand the notion of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” and of jokes made in private circles. But man, when you put that stuff out in the world — when you actively yuk it up over another man’s misfortune — it says more about you than it does about him.

I’ve gotten so I can’t bear to read most social media threads anymore; it leaves you with very bleak feelings about the state of mankind, for one thing.

And we see this bleakness repeated over and over. It doesn’t really matter the topic anymore. In response to everything from street crime to car wrecks to hikers lost in the woods, you’ll see people weighing in with the lofty air of those who were born perfect little angels who have made no mistakes or committed no misdeeds along the way.

Virtue-slinging angels with fingers flying on the keyboard to build themselves up by tearing others down.

And while I typically hate what they have to say, you know how it goes. I’d defend to my death their right to say these things.

I’m just kind of sick of listening to it.

Mark LaFlamme is an award-winning Sun Journal reporter and columnist. He’s covered the police beat since 1994.