Psychopaths and Heroes

Transcript

Its pretty deep. So I was thinking about the bystander effect.

Now a lot of people have heard this story, its a story that goes something like this there’s a woman being attacked, her window is open. A lot of people from the street or apartment or apartment window, they can see that this woman is being attacked. All of the stand in horror, none of them act, none of them call the police perhaps because of the assumption that because so many people are watching surely someone has called the police.

Surely someone is doing something about this because of this level of anominity we have in large cities we let go of our personal responsibility we assume someone else is in charge of it or taking care of it.

As a result, the woman was severely injured or killed, I can’t remember what happened in the original version of the story.

Now I wonder, in this story of course there are the bad guys or the perpetrators or the villain, perhaps a psychopath but that’s an exxageration. But the criminal who is attacking this woman and then we have normal people, bystanders.

They aren’t necessarily psychopathic but they are somewhat apathetic. They are normal. That’s the thing that is what is normal in a large city is to be apathetic about others and not take responsibility. Then we have the third kind of person, who is a hero. The third kind of person that will stand up and say “We can’t do this, I am going to stand up and take action even if someone else has already called I don’t lose anything by calling the police again or somehow doing something about this situation.”

Not an easy thing to do in the heat of the moment, that is part of the reason I am mentioning it to you now so when a situation does come up you can be prepared and say to yourself “Do I want to take responsibility for this?”

And maybe you can in some small way.

Let’s say another situation that might be a bit more common for a lot of us. Say you go to a party and people are drinking and have a good time. Perhaps there are other substances being passed around. People are relaxed and chill no one wants to kill the vibe, just chill.

No seriousness, just relax, its all cool. Then someone comes in and says “Hey, there’s a woman downstairs, she passed out on the couch.” Maybe you don’t think about it too much.

Maybe your buddy hands you a beer and says “She’s probably drunk and will be fine in the morning, let her sleep.”

The reality is of course not a lot of people, not everyone dies from alcohol poisoning if they take too much but we don’t know the case given this information it might actually be more severe.

You could go along with what your buddy says and ignore the situation or you could investigate for yourself. We all have that opportunity to go a little deeper in the off chance something is serious.

Imagine if we are in that kind of situation and we have the chance to take responsibility and don’t and something serious happens as a result it will be difficult to wipe that from our memories. If we reach inside and say “I am not going to be a bystander.”

Reach inside to say “I am going to take action. I am going to take responsibility because this is my planet, these are my people and when we are in a tricky situation I want to know others are looking out for me. I want to know I am looking out for others”

We take action and ensure the wellbeing of our companions. All of us are likely to have one of these situations come up in our lives. Perhaps many of them, perhaps many times they are going to be high stakes in some form.

So will you step up, of course I imagine you are not a psychopath you are better than that.

You have empathy, you care about people already but you don’t always switch it on.

That’s a thing with a lot of people, empathy can be switched off and that can work in our favor. If someone is in a tricky situation they need someone to switch on and be more than a bystander.

Be a hero.