Don’t be the one who did nothing

2011-10-21 14:38

A few years ago, I was on holiday with a group of friends to a house overlooking a beach in the Transkei. One morning, standing on our balcony, we witnessed a man violently beating his girlfriend on the beach.

Before we could come to a decision about the best thing to do, a group of people from a closer house ran onto the beach, dragged the man off his girlfriend and gave him a good beating in return. While I’ve never been entirely certain about the merits of meeting violence with violence, I admired the immediacy of their intervention.

All too often, we are withheld from doing the right thing by concerns or reservations about the complications or even dangers of getting involved. The story of the toddler Wang Yue who was knocked down in China by a van and then run over by another two vans and left bleeding in the street while onlookers walked past is a heartbreaking tale of the callousness of humanity.

Wang Yue lost the fight for her life in hospital today, her massive internal injuries proving too serious for her young body to recover from.

As much as this might seem like an isolated case of horrific cruelty by the two van drivers and the 18 onlookers, there are frequently stories from around the world of people doing nothing to help others when it is most needed.

We all know the story of Jamie Bulger who was kidnapped by two older children, then tortured and murdered. Camera footage and later investigations revealed that 38 people had seen the unhappy toddler being dragged around town by the two boys. Assuming he was their younger brother, they did nothing.

These stories make us sick to our stomachs because we know what the outcome was. They fill us with outrage at the people who did nothing because we know where their choices led. And we all believe that had it been us, we wouldn’t have done the same thing.

However, both these stories show that in some instances, the majority of onlookers will choose not to get involved. Perhaps it’s late at night, or the situation is risky for anyone who might get involved, or perhaps there’s the certainty that the situation is so awful that someone else will do something about it.

So, however astonishing it might seem that 18 people might walk past a bleeding toddler, or 38 people might not intervene in the torturing of a small child, it’s possible to follow the line of reasoning that would seemingly justify their unjustifiable actions in the moment.

When I hear stories like the death of Wang Yue, they always serve as a reminder to me to get involved and to give a damn, because while the intervention might seem difficult or inconvenient or a little frightening, the alternative of being one of the people who allowed it to happen is a whole lot worse.

- Georgina Guedes is a freelance writer. You can follow @georginaguedes on Twitter.

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