http://www.wave3.com/global/story.asp?s=6749810
That’s incredible. I can see something like this maybe a few hundred years ago but I’d like to think that we are no longer that indifferent to a stranger’s suffering.
I wish I could say this surprises me.
It doesn’t.
It sickens me, but there’s no surprise here.
So many people are callous and cold towards everyone, now. They go through the day trying to just get what they want and to hell with anyone else. They probably looked at this woman bleeding to death and wondered what she’d done to deserve to get stabbed.
And in a culture where money is always the bottom line and people are considered disposable commodities, I don’t see it getting any better anytime soon.
Welcome to the jungle.
–James
Hmmm… something doesn’t sound right to me.
Do we have the entire story?
Probably not.
Its a better headline being “Woman Stabbed, None Care!”
I wonder if that person actually looked stabbed?
Does she regularly sit about that store or outside?
I have a reason for saying this.
The area I live in is literally infested with all sorts of unsavory characters.
I have had to stop giving them money or food because its never ending.
Its like feeding stray cats.
I have had to harden myself to it.
I can’t help them.
Ive seen all sorts of wacky things these sorts of folks will do to get your attention so they can get money.
Many of the them will get agressive if you communicate with them.
I’ve had them get angry at me for not giving them “enough” change.
I admit to walking over a few when they try to block the front of the store or gas station. Usually the manager will be out with a broom to shoo them off.
Most of these people should be in mental hospitals.
They’d at least stand some chance of surviving or even perhaps recovering with medication.
That is where I’d rather put my money to help them.
It’s unbelievable.
It seems to me (well, in the UK certainly), that if you live in a village (which I do), and everyone knows everyone else, people will still be civil, and look out for each other, but God help you if you live in a large town or city…people (on the whole), couldn’t care less. It’s very sad indeed.
Cass.
ps. I can kind of see where Aanvil is coming from though! It’s a tough world!
Now don’t you folks get the wrong idea about Kansas. We may ignore the human detritus adorning the convenience mart floor, but we also gave the world Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, the goat gland doctor, and that papal pretender Pope Michael.
I can’t believe you characters haven’t come across humans before.
emphasis mine:
– On June 23rd a 27-year-old Wichita, Kansas woman > lay stabbed and bleeding > inside a convenience store. Wichita police say surveillance video shows shoppers going about their business, not even trying to help or call 911 for a full two minutes.
They won’t release the videotape.
According to the Wichita Eagle, “> no fewer than five store patrons stepped over her to complete purchases> .”
The video shows the woman “struggling to her feet and collapsing three times without anyone helping her,” and one woman who stepped over the victim four times while shopping eventually took a “photo of her with a cell phone.”
“If people would have been calling us, who knows what the outcome might have been,” the Eagle quotes Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams.
People amaze/alarm me. What an example of hardness and disconnection. I am ashamed that this can happen in the world I brought my kids into, let alone the nation I call home.
Interesting thing about Witchita… when I was there some 25 years ago or so, there were 365 Churches, and an equal number of bars… so every day of the year you could attend a different one. Seems a lot of folk have managed to avoid anything that might teach empathy, responsibility, or what was once called common decency.
Oh, for cripes sake! The woman who took the photos with her phone published them to the internet… what an incredibly stupid thing to do… thinking of what she could post instead of what a fellow human desperately needed. I hope I’m not standing near her when Karma kicks back!
…Psychologist Dr. Molly Allen says a phenomenon called group think may have taken over.
“That’s where if somebody doesn’t step in to render assistance then the entire group might get the message that for some reason it’s not okay to render assistance or that this is less than an emergency,” Allen said…
It’s amazing how modern shrinks always have some “phenomenon” theory to excuse bad behavior.
I’ve seen familiar phenomenon as well. You ever been in a line at the movie theater and one line has a bunch of people and another has no one in it? People will often go to the back of a long line rather than to the empty one, especially if they see others going to the long line. It’s an amusing phenomenon to watch. In this case though, I have to agree with Aanvil that we don’t know the entire story and it was possible that people weren’t aware of the emergency.
Perhaps Dr. Molly Allen was suffering from a phenomenon called psychologist view at the time she made that statement. 
djm
Sounds like the old ‘pack mentality’ - it only takes one person’s actions (or inaction) to lead a whole group to follow suit without thinking at all … it can lead to vicious attacks, outright ignoring, and on rare occasions, to a whole group doing the right thing… don’t see much of the latter, unfortunately.
I remember hearing someone talking about this behavior. Studies had shown that if you need help, you are more likely to get help if there is just one person around. More than one and everyone thinks that someone else will step in and give assistance, therefore no one does.
This is indicative of humanity’s fallen state and rather sadly reflective of modern Western social values in particular, I feel.
Amen!
Sorry… a woman is lying on the floor in the store, and not one person was concerned enough to check?? That’s just way too far out there.
In our minds perhaps each of us secretely thinks WE would be the one to help the poor woman out. But I really do wonder if that would be the case. I hope none of us ever have to find out first-hand, but chances are somebody will.
I’ve seen homeless people sleeping on the ground in front of and around stores. I don’t often lean down to check if they are alive. Besides, we are talking about a span of 2 minutes before someone knew something was wrong, not the course of a day. I would have to see the video to make judgments on what happened. Did people see the woman collapse and not offer aid? All sorts of questions are raised.
I can honestly say that it wouldn’t take me even 2 minutes to ask if she was OK. I find it extremely distressing that folks have come to accept people lying in the ailes of a store to be ‘normal’ enough to ignore the fact that most people wouldn’t be lying in the aisle of the store if something wasn’t terribly wrong! She wan’t outside the store, she was inside. Not likely to be a sleeping homeless person.
On a related subject, some interesting reading from Wikipedia:
I know exactly what you mean and have wondered about this many times. I can say that I have never really been tried. It frightens me to think that I may not pass the test when I am. There have been a couple of small situations that I did not like my behavior in, and I believe my thinking about those has helped me do better in other small situations. So I can only hope that maybe it will help me in big situations as well. But you are right, I don’t think you can really know for sure what you would do. Or at least, some of us cannot know for sure.