7th December: Day 56 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
I don’t know if it’s because of my days of sociology and psychology or because I’m just a bit of a kook, but when I see people doing strange things, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and start looking for hidden cameras and candid camera show producers or social experiment researchers planted behind large shrubs.
So when I was cycling to Richmond on Sunday and I saw what seemed to be an eighty-year-old man on his hands and knees, strangely my first thought wasn’t, “he fell down,” but “he’s preparing to launch into the crow pose” as these how-to’ers demonstrate for you:
But while he appeared to be perched like a bird on wire for some serious yoga, it only took a few seconds to see that he probably needed help.
As I ditched my bike, I was transported back to social psychology class and the story of Kitty Genovese who was brutally stabbed to death in Queens in 1964. As she was robbed, stabbed and sexually assaulted, between twenty and forty neighbours witnessed the scene. But it was only after a half an hour, once the final attack was finished, that the police were phoned.
Since then, social scientists have done a lot of research on the perceived diffusion of responsibility that leads to the bystander effect. It seems like a crazy idea – that if you are hurt and surrounded by a large group, that you are less likely to receive aid – but the decreasing likelihood of intervention makes sense from the perspective that bystanders see the rest of the crowd and continue on, sure that at least one other will stop to help.
The scariest thing about all of this is realising that I am not immune to this effect. It first happened in 2005 when I was jammed in an alcove of the S train platform at Times Square, trying to switch for the 1/9 or 2/3. We all struggled to move forward, like a can of sardines, traveling as a unit through the bowels of the MTA. And then I heard the screams. It was a frantic woman. She had been pickpocketed and kept screaming, “My wallet! My wallet! Someone help!”
Conscious of this bystander effect, I felt a responsibility to step forward. But I, too, was trapped. And I had NO IDEA what I would do for her. So I stood in my little allotment of space and hoped for the best for her. And felt completely helpless and besides myself for just blending into the crowd as she continued to try to find her wallet in the crowd, before everyone dispersed. Especially when I knew that there was a high likelihood that the rest of the bystanders around her would be doing exactly what I was doing.
When I finally extracted myself from the bottleneck and saw that she was free, I approached her to see if there was anything I could do. But honestly, by that time, she had located the police and it seemed like a bit of a cop-out, to offer help at that point.
So back to my crouching eighty-year-old. I threw my bike down and honestly didn’t know what to do. So I began running from house to house, knocking on doors to see if someone would help… to no answer. And then I saw people out for a Sunday stroll, so I cornered them, and asked them to call someone, figuring that whilst I had my own phone, they would know the magic emergency numbers that had not yet been taught in my English as A Second Culture classes.
In the end, a family also stopped their car and the mother took control of the scene.
I have to say that I rode away feeling worse than when I stopped – stupid and inadequate for not knowing what to do – but overall, I was relieved that the temptation to pedal on and allow someone else to help was not too strong this time around.
