Okay… first off colour my buttons sensitized. I have not watched “Finding Nemo” in (oh… about) 9 months. I can no longer walk thru a public area without turning quickly when I hear a child cry. I am surprised at the number of children I never noticed at the Zoo.
This weekend in Pike Place Market while a grandparent was paying at a cashier, a person in a hooded sweatshirt grabbed and tried to abduct his 7 year old granddaughter.
The grandfather shouted for help and made pursuit, the child yelled, screamed and fought the assailant. The criminal let go and ran.
So why is it a rant? The grandfather later reported in interview that despite screaming for help… no one looked. No one reacted.
Have we become so desensitized to crime that we’re more worried about being “HERO”s by phoning in HOV lane offenses than we are to the plight of a child? Why as a society are we being driven to fear thought-crime and consensual vice, but at the same time ignore the crimes of child abuse, abduction, and property theft.
Bar brawls are now television entertainment rather than physical assault. When I have to turn to the observations of a writer of fiction to see the inhumanity in this world without sensationalism on the news… I wonder where our priorities have really gone.
Personally, I’m getting tired of being told what to think, what I can and can’t do, and what makes me a good citizen. I am tired of this when I discover the people telling me these things not only don’t practice what they demand I do and shouldn’t have told me such in the first place.
You want to show support of our troops? Bring them home to their families and make sure there are jobs waiting for them here that bring in enough money so they can support and raise those families.
Just a little undirected rant. Move about your business.
Go back to Standard Operating Procedure: “Nothing to see, here.
I am horrified to think that no one would stop to help a child being abducted. That’s one of the worst crimes out there, and people did nothing?!? It’s no wonder the government steam rolls our liberties and lies to us at every turn–they know we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re all talk and no action, as a people. It disgusts me.
ugh – the recent attack on the 91-year-old man “caught on tape” turned my stomach to watch. I’ll not be clicking on many of those any more. Pisses me off that people stood by and did nothing.
Maybe no one intervened because they were afraid the crook would blow them away.
Are you saying no one even pulled out their cell and dialed 911? That would be inexcusable. Anyone can do that, even someone who is not strong enough, fast enough, or brave enough to stop a crime in progress.
Many people are unable to react in an instant. Those that are may fear hurting someone if they act wrongly, and/or feel it is not their place to get involved. For those of us remaining, would-be heroes, it is a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Once upon a time I was able to save someone who was drowning, but if I had beed ten minutes too early or too late, I wouldn’t have been in such a position.
I submit to you that heroism is much less a matter of power than of attitude. That is the lesson of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, among others. We do what we can.
There is a period of time that goes through most people’s minds when they encounter a crime such as a child abduction or a purse snatching where people hear something, see something, but it doesn’t register because it is just so outside of “normal” that people simply are unable to figure out what’s going on.
After a realization occurs, then people move into a second phase, that of shock. Not the shock of “my world just turned upside down”, but more like the shock of realizing that the keys are still in the car as you push the car door closed–you know something bad is happening but its so fast you are unable to make the decision to resolve the problem.
Most people who don’t react to something like a child snatching are stuck in the first or second cognative phase: they’re either in the “data hitting brain for processing is outside of sigma” rut, or the “something bad is happening but I don’t know how to react” rut.
Of course this has nothing to do with a culture (such as Iraq) where the nomative belief system supports honor killing, and the beating to death of a woman is considered reasonable rather than obscene–so tying in a design flaw in human cognative functioning with fundamental differences in cultural expectations is sort of like saying that the Macintosh UI sucks because the MS Windows GDI doesn’t properly support dithering without resorting to off-screen memory device contexts. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.
I think you’re being overly harsh here.
Clearly those people were focused on the truly important thing:
Capturing the whole thing on their cell phone cams to post on YouTube.