A friend of mine was taking his daily commute home on the Tube one evening, people packed in armpit-to-sweaty-armpit, when he witnessed something alarming. A young commuter had made the mistake of standing on the foot of the (noticeably bigger) man beside him. The bigger man was furious, and it seemed an apology wasn’t enough to make him let it go. Instead, he reached out and put his hands around the throat of the young guy, eyes ablaze, mumbling that he was going to kill him.
At this, everyone else on the Tube carriage leapt upon the big man, pulled him from the poor commuter, and pinned him down, before alerting the police at the next station.
Well. You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you?
What really happened was NOBODY DID ANYTHING.Given that everyone was packed in so tightly, countless people were aware what was happening … yet they all pretended they couldn’t see the man being strangled beside them. They didn’t want to get involved.
My friend, a fair few feet away and in total disbelief that no one was helping, pushed his way through the apathetic commuters and grabbed the arm of the big man. Only then did another couple of passengers finally take the strangler’s other arm, and together they averted his grip on the young guy’s jugular. When the Tube came to a stop, the strangler simply strode off the Tube, and my friend – along with the man who had been attacked– did their best to follow him, before contacting the Tube security. Yes, it was a frightening incident, but it was the reaction of the other passengers that shocked me more when I heard this.
How did we get to this point where we will stand idly by as someone is getting harassed or attacked?
We all know the answer to this, of course. We’re afraid! We know the dangers of getting involved! It’s in the papers every other day: someone being kicked to death for confronting vandals , or people being stabbed for defending a friend from a bully. We have learned that standing up for someone else – or indeed, for ourselves – is likely to get us hurt, or even killed.
How many times have you wanted to tell the guy on the bus with the loud music to turn it down? And how many times have you actually done it? Rarely will anyone take the plunge and ask - instead we’ll shoot him annoyed looks and tut under our breath. (You know the tutting. The sound which translates as, “I want to give you a piece of my mind but I’m afraid you’ll stab me.”)
There was the recent incident where a girl asked a guy to stop tapping his bottle on the train. Despite being in broad daylight, he got off at her stop and was caught on CCTV as he followed her, ran up behind her, and punched her in the face. He broke her nose.
Why do people react like this? Obviously it’s from lacking common decency and respect for others, but I can’t help feel that part of it lies with all of us. We no longer take a stand. It’s not the norm to ask someone to stop doing something unpleasant; so on those occasions when someone does, the lout in question becomes extremely incensed. “How dare they? Nobody tells me what to do!”
And they’re right - nobody does.
This is my own theory, yes, and perhaps not everyone will agree with me. But no one can deny that we all need to take affirmative action more than we do.
In the 1970s Douglas Adams wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . The series is disguised as sci-fi, but in fact, it’s a clever satirical observation on human (particularly English) culture. In one scene the protagonist’s spaceship is forced to land in London’s Lords Cricket Ground, in the middle of a big match. The human on board worries about being seen, but is told that they are protected by an SEP field. SEP stands for “Somebody Else’s Problem”.
“An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is.”
This is what we do. We block out the things we don’t want to get involved in. At the end of the day if there is a threat, and it’s not to us, we want to keep it that way. We would rather not get involved, or at best, we will wait for someone else to jump to the rescue first.
This is not to say that anyone should leap into the middle of a brawl, or take on an aggressive drunk at their own peril. The fact is, it really could get us killed. But it’s time we all stopped pretending we don’t see it. We need to cease walking past, or ignoring an uneasy situation, and take some action. People, it’s time to stand up!
If someone is being abusive to a fellow train passenger, note the details of the person, or even record them on your phone, and alert security. If you think you see someone in distress while walking home, make it known that you are there and you are watching what is going on. Get your phones out. Report it to the police straight away. Getting involved doesn’t need to mean putting yourself in the line of danger. Be the CCTV. Be the voice. Providing information will help put offenders away and standing up to these people may just change the perception of how we will all react.
Image via Effekt's Flickr