I have always had a difficult time processing the idea of a passive bystander or the bystander effect. I’m not a superhero but I often don’t think about who else is doing what before I decide to act in any given scenario. I may consider safety but what any other given human is doing, probs not. Again, I’m not an angel, it just seems bizarre.
Did you learn about Kitty Genovese in any of your college classes? I don’t think it’s a lower education experience. The Kitty Genovese story is one concerning the murder of a young woman in queens whereas the label of the bystander effect was born.
Anyway, I’m not going to expand pointlessly on that now because I suppose you can Google if you want greater detail. It’s just that if I heard a woman screaming or worse, saw that she was being hurt, I cannot fathom that in that moment I’d think “well, here’s hoping someone else called the police…” Call the damn police. Be the third caller. Does that matter?
Continuing this episode of ‘what I believe in and what I don’t’, let’s briefly explore the cognitive dissonance. In case you aren’t familiar with the condition, I’m going to give you my low brow breakdown. Unlike the bystander effect, I fully understand how people experience cognitive dissonance. You have to or are being presented with something to do and well, you don’t want to do it. Your brain shifts and moves and bends to restore balance. Huh? Yeah, your mind modifies your attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to bring you to a spot where that thing you had to do is appealing or at least acceptable. You’ve made the round peg fit into the square hole.
Why does THIS make sense to me? I know that I’ve found myself under duress or just feeling pressured to do something. Sometimes that thing (or belief) is critical to the forward movement of my relationship or necessary for my job. When I feel like I HAVE to do something, then I will try and find a way to discover the necessary support beams within me to get me there more comfortably.
So what I’m saying to you right now is that I find the idea abhorrent that someone would stand by and do nothing if they were witnessing some emergency or crime BUT I’m okay with someone having to not do anything and telling themselves whatever they need to in order to feel better about it. Whoa, that’s pretty gross, no?
It is and I don’t think I am that kind of a person and yet, being completely honest, one of those concepts is understandable where the other is repulsive. To be fair, they both seem pretty outrageous when I explain using examples, but that’s not how it works. Right? We don’t just take a long walk off the short pier that is justifying unacceptable thoughts and behavior. We start small and grow big.
Are you with me here? Do you know where I’m going with this? Maybe I’m being too dense or obscure. Our society is deeply entrenched in an existence that reinforces and plainly exhibits both the bystander effect and cognitive dissonance. We’ve become numb. Self-centered. Self-directed. We latch onto BIG ideas and commit to BIG actions that have MAJOR impact by shifting the landscape around us and moving around our inner bits.
We look at someone standing in a burning window and think, surely they have a safe place to land. Surely someone will throw out a giant cushy surface? Surely someone will be able to pull them back in and show them safe passage? Surely someone will be able to put out the fire so the danger no longer presents? Or maybe we tell ourselves that they shouldn’t have been up there to begin with or wonder why they didn’t evacuate in time. Maybe we think about something they did that wasn’t so great or something someone told us that they did that wasn’t so great and think about the karmic connection. Maybe we think about how we heard that this person was responsible for some troubling problem and acknowledge that the troublesome issue wouldn’t exist any longer if that person was no longer around. Then we think how shitty that thought is, but still tell ourselves that someone else will call for help or something will work out, and walk away.
I know what you are thinking. No fucking way. Not me. Yes, you. Yes, me. Yes, all of us. We get comfortable with uncomfortable notions because we thrive in equilibrium (most of us anyway). We get ourselves to even keel no matter what because we don’t like to sit in discomfort, even for a minute.
But then some of us (path to worthy-ers) decide to let ourselves feel a little squirmy. We callous the bottoms of our souls to walk on those hot emotional coals. That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s the entire point of these last few posts. We can’t claim to be exempt from these experiences and set ourselves on the right path unless we first take stock and ownership. We have to look around and call things like they are and understand how we see them and look at the space in between. We have to be able to recognize the behavior in others that makes us uncomfortable and move away from them or actively rebut those notions that bring us off-kilter.
So, I am starting there. Many of us have been staring up at a face in the window of a burning building and choosing to look away. Many of us have been condemning the face in the window to whatever fate they are facing because of something we believe they have done. Many of us have created space between who the face in the window is and who we are so we can get comfortable with whatever is in store for them. Many of us have turned against the person who decides to try to help or even the person who yells out, asking what should be done.
We are not looking at the person and determining that they deserve safe passage. Whatever happens to them eventually, whatever they have to face, whatever they have to own, whoever they are, they deserve safe passage. The outcome is not always fair, when they face what they must. However, we support the notion that there are structures for a reason. There are rules for a reason. We trust that the universe tries to get it right most of the time. And the rest, are lessons. The rest are battles. The rest, are obstacles.
But we don’t tap out. Ever.
Talk tomorrow.
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 