Would You Jump in to Stop an Assault?

This article feels like an effort to explain away, via “normalizing”, an understandable yet often unacceptable level of apathy rationalized by fear.

Life is messy, and most people don’t want to get involved in problems especially when the actors seem homeless or maybe feed into racial stereotypes. It can be a mix of feeling ineffective, distrust of what one is observing, a fear of physical consequence, and of publicity. These are all rational if not always correct.

We all feel it, and all of us fall victim to it sometimes - the brain quickly rationalizes why we shouldn’t intervene.

That’s kind of where the article stops, but I think it needs to go further in holding up the virtue of engaging to help others.

There is a switch that one needs to overcome, and it’s something you train your mind to do, which is to run towards problems, not away from them. When you do it once - like are able to “see” your brain giving you shitty instinctive advice, overcome it, and intervene to successfully help, you grok the dynamic and are more prepared for dealing with it in the future.

It’s a rewarding cycle, even if you get no credit (often best scenario), and can drive you to improve your own skills (like learn CPR, etc). You never know when you’ll be in such a situation but I think it’s important to prepare your mind for it, understand your own values and establish principles ahead of time for when it’s okay to get messy. But I think all of us, as responsible members of society, tend to owe some level of action depending on our capabilities. There are plenty of situations where it’s ill-advised to intervene, but more often than not freezing up is the wrong reaction and we need to encourage courage.