In Continuum.

Social proof isn't something that exists only in the classrooms. You know how it is when you watch sitcoms on the television, and certain shows have soundtracks in the background with the audience laughing at the jokes the actors are making, like some sort of cue for the viewers at home to laugh along as well. It has worked brilliantly in the past, because it has been proven that shows do seem a lot funnier if you watch it with a crowd laughing along, rather than watching it alone in your living room with no other possible laughter but your own. Someone edited out all the laughter in an episode of Friends a few years ago, and suddenly it wasn't as funny as I remembered it to be anymore. The same can be said about being at a concert when you have that urge to stand up and let your hair down for the next hour and a half. You really want to do it, but then nobody around you seem to have the same enthusiasm as yourself. Everybody is calmly seated with their hands folded on their laps, all watching the performer intently with their eyes fixated on the stage. So you conform, and you remain in your seat with your hands folded on your laps and your eyes fixated on the stage as well. When nobody is doing what you feel like you should be doing, you don't do it. Although that may not seem like a big issue now, it certainly is disturbing to know that in the event that something involves the life and death of a stranger, humans are not going to change their spots either. 

There was a disturbing piece of news that I read about this afternoon about a woman dying in an emergency room. You must be telling yourself, what is so shocking about a woman dying in the emergency room? A lot of people die in the hospital everyday, and the emergency room is probably the center of the action if you are into that sort of things. There really shouldn't be anything to worry about, especially when you are talking about a hospital. Only, the woman didn't die on a surgery table or in a ward, but on the floor of the waiting room right next to a bunch of other patients. The camera caught the whole thing, from the moment she collapsed onto the floor at the waiting room until the point of her death. It took her an hour on the floor that morning to pass away, and patients came in and out of the waiting room within that hour and nobody seemed to have noticed the woman on the floor for some reason. Two security guards even came by the waiting room at one point, but none of them could be bothered about a patient lying on the floor. So, the woman died because nobody gave a shit for the full one hour, and you just start to wonder to yourself if this whole "social proof" thing is more than just a psychological phenomenon. Maybe it is a disease, a good reason to kill off all the humans in this world because we are so unworthy of living on this planet of ours. We don't really need to start killing each other now, we just need to do nothing while somebody else dies. 

The worst part is probably how this isn't the first time it has happened either. It happened a month or two ago when a man was ran over by a car in broad daylight, and the incident was caught on camera as well. It happened in the middle of a busy street, with cars coming in opposing directions on either side of the road, and pedestrians on the sidewalk just like how a busy street would look like in your mind. This man crashed into the windscreen of one of the cars, rolled down the hood of the car and laid there in the middle of the road and paralyzed the traffic. But it's not like an accident like this one stopped anybody on the sidewalk for a moment, nor did the drivers get out of their cars to help out this poor man either. They drove around this poor man who was dying in a puddle of his own blood, and the same thing happened in repetition for the next few minutes on the camera. The policemen came later on, not because somebody decided that it'd be wise to call them, but because they just so happened to be in the vicinity of the accident when it happened. Nobody called 911, and nobody bothered to stop the traffic in case somebody was stupid enough to run him over again. He just laid there and died on the street, and nobody stopped because nobody else did. 

I think there is a good reason why a large part of this world is still living in poverty, why a large part of this world is still facing the fear of genocide. The clergymen and the traders aside, the reason behind these humanitarian and social problems is really because the majority of the people in this world are really not doing anything to stop these atrocities. You know, because your next door neighbor is more concerned about the rising oil prices, nobody really cares about some poor kid dying in the jungles of Congo. And why would he? I mean, he has no relations to this anonymous child, it's not like his death is going to make a difference to his life, or the rest of the world anyway. He is going to remain as a statistic that is to be printed on the fifth page of a newspaper, and then the piece of news is going to be read by about 14 percent of the readers of that newspaper and then forgotten. I truly believe that if we invest a great part of the world's monetary profits into solving these problems in the third world, we will be able to get rid of them for sure. Just think about the amount of money all the religious institutions and all the big businesses are earning on an annual basis. Do you mean to tell me that a portion of that money is not going to solve the issues we have in this world today? 

Arguably, it may seem like a naive thought, because things are way more complicated than just "paying somebody to do the job". It is a lot more complicated than that, but I am sure it is certainly going to help. The reason why nobody is doing anything about it is because the majority of the people in this world are just busying themselves with, well, themselves. It is true that the measure of a society is to look at how they treat their poorest. Can we not say the same thing about mankind and how we treat our poorest? There are campaigns, there are funds, there are a dozen different charity organizations in this world trying to do "something" for the poor, the unfortunate, the needy. Yet, greater issues are at hand and they cannot be solved, because the powers at be are also the ones who are controlled by the big businesses, by the governments, and these barriers are also the ones that cannot be broken. More than those, however, it is the mindset in our heads that cannot be altered. You know, when the majority of us remain silent, the rest of us are going to follow suit because we are just not built to stand out like that. It just seems to be something that is embedded in the human genes, something that we have zero control over. 

My sister fell on a set of escalators a few years ago at Redhill, and she had to call my mother to pick her up because she couldn't possibly take a public transport home. She was going to school that morning when it happened, during one of those peak hour traffics made up by a thousand people minding their own businesses are trying to meet their own timings. Somebody accidentally shoved her from the back, and her knee cap went straight for the edge of one of the escalator steps and punctured her skin. It was a nasty wound, or at least that was the case when I saw it back home. It was a deep hole in the knee, as if somebody drilled a hole in the effort to hang a painting there or something. She said there was a puddle of blood around her when she fell, but then it's not like anybody stopped by to give her a hand when it happened. Everybody continued walking away, to chased their trains, to get to work on time, to go to school before the flag raising, nobody cared about my sister and the fact that she had a hole in her knee. Somebody came by to help her, just one person. He, or she, gave her a band-aid, how nice of him or her. The band-aid really did nothing to stop the bleeding, but at least it was something, out of the many things that the strangers could have done. But no, they had to meet timings, and they didn't do anything because nobody else did. 

You remember those civics and moral education classes we've had in grade school, and they always showed pictures of smiling students helping old people across a busy street, or a schoolboy giving a schoolmate a helping hand because he fell down and injured himself. So much for all those education those, because it's not like we have evolved very much as a species. When was the last time you gave a seat to an old person on the bus anyway, when was the last time you help anybody across the road. Well, probably a long time ago if it ever happened before, because it just doesn't seem to be the "right thing to do". We seem to know what is the right thing to do, but then the right thing to do never seems to be the one that you should be doing. We naturally assume that somebody else is going to do something about it, and in the end all the assumptions amount to nothing being done at all. If a society is going to be based on a system of one person waiting for another, then it really isn't going to work now is it. I refuse to believe that this is just another one of those conclusions in an experiment, but a disease we have as a species. It just seems like it to me, the way things are right now. 

I read about an experiment done once, and it was actually before I took PSY250 this semester. It was conducted with a room full of supposed volunteers, when all of them are actually just confederate of the experimenter, save for one participant who was oblivious to it all. They were shown a picture with four lines on it, one being away from the other three lines. They were asked which of the three lines on the right was the same length with the one line on the left, and the question was pretty obvious since the three lines on the right were purposely drawn to have a great variation in length. While the one innocent participant chose the right answer, all the confederates purposely chose the wrong answer just to mess with his head. Here is the strange part: the participant changed his answer to suit the majority of the people in the room, although their answer was obviously wrong. This experiment demonstrated just how easy it is to manipulate humans - all you need to do is to convince them that everybody else thinks the same way, and that you should do it too. 

It's the same as seeing somebody being mugged in a dark alley, and the amount of responsibility you have as a person. If you witness this as an individual, you'd be moved to do something about it. Perhaps call the police, or call for help, maybe stop the crime if you are brave enough. Still, if you are the lone witness, you'd do something about it. However, if you see it with a dozen other people, more often than not, you are not going to do anything about it. They call it "the diffusion of responsibility", and it's just kind of sick how they make it sound like the distribution of cakes on a birthday party. It's like, if we give a formal and scientific term to something, then it is perfectly OK for it to exist in our society. It is alright if fellow patients in an emergency room decide to just sit on their fat asses while somebody else dies on the floor next to you. Somebody else would come to her rescue, and that somebody doesn't necessarily have to be you. The diffusion of responsibility, aren't we all drowning in a world of euphemisms lately? It's called irresponsibility, it's as simple as that. 

I wonder why they call it "social proof" in the first place, are we trying to prove anything by doing nothing? Are we trying to prove that we are incapable of simple everyday kindness when others do not show the same, or are we trying to prove that we are all waiting for someone else to do the things that you are capable of doing yourself. It is OK if you laugh along to a bad joke, if you sing along to a band that you don't necessary like at a rock concert. But if we are going to carry the same mentality over to a life and death situation, then we are seriously a disease bunch of people. It is true that we are the only disease to murder each other out of rage, out of pleasure, out of our own selfish desires. While those are the things that come along with what sets us apart from the animals, should we also be the one and only species to watch a fellow human being die next to our feet? I have seen a video of a herd of water buffalos rescuing one of their own from crocodiles and lions, can't we do the same for other humans, especially the ones within our power to rescue?