Genovese Syndrome/The Bystander Effect

This past Sunday I was walking and observed a incident occur in which a elderly man fell over and hurt himself on smashed glass. Adding to the situation was that he fell onto a part of the street that was not the middle but a part where cars go and is not easily visible to traffic. I was the first one to show up and begin helping him. I was very pleasantly surprised when within 40 seconds I had 6 people who had stopped to help including a gentleman driving a van who parked his vehicle in a way which sealed off traffic. We called EMS and flagged them when they showed up. This incident was handled well and had a happy ending. However there is a problem that seems to be pervasive everywhere which is that people are either scared to, do not care or do not see or notice something happen and will walk away without even calling for help. This phenomenon is called Genovese Syndrome or the Bystander Effect (Wikipedia). I have personally witnessed this on several occasions but the one that sticks out in my mind is when I was driving to a friends wedding and I saw a gentleman facedown on the ground with about 20 people standing around him and watching but no one trying to approach him or attempting to help at all. I pulled over and helped and got the ball rolling. Turned out he was down for 5 minutes before I got there.

The reason why I am writing about this is because we all potentially have a stake in this. We never know if we may be in this guys shoes or needing someone's help. And it is not so uncommon for this to have fatal results. We have the Good Samaritan laws to protect well meaning people who acted in good faith from lawsuits when they acted within their bounds. It shows to a extent a lack of caring which is not necessarily the majority but it is a very big problem to the point where people have done projects on it with startling results. I am concerned about the turn which humanity seems to be taking. What happens when we are so busy in our own little virtual (Iphones,internet,Facebook) worlds that we can not or choose not to help. How can we hope to help other countries when we can not even take the time of day to help our own?