And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering said
A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him.Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise...Luke 10: 25-37
I first came across Catherine "Kitty" Susan Genovese in Malcolm Gladwell's 'Tipping Point." She was an ordinary working class girl, of Italian- American descent, who was brutally murdered in New York City in the spring of 1964. The crime was not the most violent of crimes, but stood alone in its stark revelation of a harsh and disturbing reality of urban life. It shocked the American nation, provoking a nationwide soul-searching and self-recrimination.
Kitty had just driven home from her job working as a bar manager at Ev's Eleventh Hour Sports Bar on Jamaica Avenue and 193rd Street in Hollis, Queens. It was 3:15am on March 13, when she parked her red Fiat about thirty metres from her apartment building on a quiet tree-lined street in Kew Gardens, Queens. As she walked towards the building, a man approached her. Kitty began to run. She ran to the corner bar, an establishment usually open in the wee hours. She thought the regulars at Baileys Bar would help her. Tragically, the bar was shuttered early because a new bartender was on duty. He had closed the bar before midnight because there had been fighting among patrons, a common occurrence that neighbors constantly complained about.
The man followed, caught up with her, and stabbed her twice in the back with a large carving knife. That was when she began screaming. Her cry was heard by several neighbors and several lights came on in the large Mowbray apartment house across Austin St. at 82-67; but, on a cold night with the windows closed, only a few of them recognized the sound as a cry for help. One of the neighbors, shouted at the attacker, "Let that girl alone!", but he did not call the police. Scared by the lights and shouting, the man ran away. Kitty got up from the pavement and she limped toward the rear entrance of her apartment building at 82-70 Austin Street, adjoining the railroad tracks. She was seriously injured, but now out of view of those few who may have had reason to believe she was in need of help. The man entered his car and drove away.
Alas, in ten minutes he was back! Carefully searching the parking lot, train station and apartment complex, he found her lying, barely conscious in a hallway. There, he stabbed several more times, sexually assaulted her, took some 49 dollars from her, and left her dying in the hallway. A few minutes after the second attack, a neighbour found her and called the police. They arrived within minutes and she was taken away in an ambulance at 4:15 am. Kitty died en route to the hospital. She was 28 years old.
The assault lasted thirty-five minutes and occurred outside of an apartment building where a reported 38 witnesses either heard or saw the attack and did nothing to stop it. The New York Times published on March 27 of that year carried the headlines 'Thirty Eight People Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police." In Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping point, I read that 38 neighbours observed the incident which went on for about 30 minutes. None of them called the police or did anything by way of intervention. Today the name Kitty Genovese remains synonymous with public apathy.
Many viewed the incident as an epitome of the callousness and indifference of big city dwellers. One neighbour who saw part of the attack hesitated on what to do, before getting another neighbour to call the police, was quoted as saying "I didn't want to get involved." Although the media coverage was dramatic and exaggerated by skewed facts, the whole incident shocked many people and sparked widespread public reaction. Many people were mortified. It led to a better police telephone reporting system. The case has lived on in plays, musicals, TV dramas -- it even spawned a whole new branch of psychology.
A study showed that only about a dozen people had witnessed different parts of the attack without realising its seriousness; a few saw the initial attack, and no one saw the final attack and rape. Only one neighbour was aware she was stabbed in the first attack, and only the fellow who called the police was aware of it in the second attack. Most thought it was a minor incident- a lovers' quarrel or drunken fight and were entirely unaware it was a homicide. This study was carried out in 2007 however, about forty something years after the incident.
Nonetheless, the 38 neighbour story stuck. The media never addressed claims that some of the 38 witnesses did in fact call the police. The press let the story stand. And as a result, Kew Gardens residents were vilified. It is reported and repeated in sociology and psychology textbooks and classrooms till date. Social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane started a line of research called the diffusion of responsibility, bystander effect or Genovese syndrome, showing that contrary to common expectations, large numbers of people decrease the likelihood that someone will step forward and help a victim. The reasons include the fact that onlookers see that others are not helping either, that onlookers believe others will know better how to help, and that onlookers feel uncertain about helping while others are watching.
In one experiment, for example, Latane and Darley had a student alone in a room stage an epileptic fit. When there was just one person next door, listening, that person rushed to the student’s aid 85 percent of the time. But when subjects thought that there were four others also overhearing the seizure, they came to the student’s aid only 31 percent of the time. In another experiment, people who saw smoke seeping out from under a doorway would report it 75 percent of the time when they were on their own, but the incident would be reported only 38 percent of the time when they were in a group.
When people are in a group, in other words, responsibility for acting is diffused. They assume that someone else will make the call, or they assume that because no one else is acting, the apparent problem — the seizure-like sounds from the other room, the smoke from the door — isn’t really a problem. In the case of Kitty Genovese, then, social psychologists like Latane and Darley argue, the lesson is not that no one called despite the fact that thirty-eight people heard her scream; it’s that no one called because thirty-eight people heard her scream. Ironically, had she been attacked on a lonely street with just one witness, she might have lived.
On August 30, 1997, Princess Diana's speeding Mercedes-Benz crashed in France, killing her and critically injuring other passengers in the car. Before medical help arrived for the Princess and her companions, photographers who had arrived at the scene allegedly snapped photographs of her body instead of assisting her and the others trapped in the car. As a result, the seven photographers were investigated for possibly violating, among other things, France's "Good-Samaritan" law, which requires that onlookers lend aid to victims in peril. The duty to do no wrong is a legal duty. The duty to protect against wrong is, generally speaking and excepting certain intimate relations in the nature of a trust, a moral obligation only, not recognized or enforced by law.
Here we have an almost regular occurrence of jungle justice-the lynching of suspected criminals- in full view of bystanders, the Aluu incident whereupon four young men were beaten to a pulp, and then burned alive, affording the most poignant recent example. Some of these people had stolen but a fruit in a boisterous market, and with raised cries of 'thief', 'thief', have suffered gruesome mob executions. The tragedy is two fold: first, that the sufferer is sometimes wrongly accused and has in some instances been shown to be innocent. In fact, the real culprit may have joined in the killing. For, in the absence of conviction from the Lord Jesus Christ, it is those with bigger sins that cast the bigger stones. The second is that there typically is a large crowd of people watching the incident, rather cinematically. Today, we have folks with video enabled devices, doing nothing but capturing the incident, while the sufferer suffers.
This is not new behaviour, or even urban behaviour. Undoubtedly, the hustle and bustle of city life is contributory, but this has more to do with the dark side of the human nature. People have been known to throw lavish burial parties for relatives they would give nothing to, for the health care that was needed to prevent death. It is easier to talk, exclaim, wonder or even write about such things. One experience of a victim would surprise many people, how innate the bystander or passerby effect is. It seems strangely true that the further we are from the incident, the more clearly we see, and the angrier we become; but when faced with real people in need, a certain apathy supervenes.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference
The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference
That is a quote by Elie Wiesel who survived the Jewish Holocaust and for several years could not find words to express the utter horror and dehumanization in those death camps. The great tragedy was that the world stood by and watched as gross injustice was meted out against a people. On February 12, 2006, the new translation of an abridged version of his memoirs -"Night" was no. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list for paperback non-fiction. For his extensive work in the course of peace and for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism, Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
In 1984, the man in the story became eligible for parole. His name is Winston Moseley. At the time of this crime, Moseley was a 29 year old business machine operator who lived at Ozone Park, and was married with two children. He had left his wife in bed at 2am that morning. He had assaulted and killed other women at the time of his apprehending. A jury convicted him and he was sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted by the appeal court to life imprisonment on grounds of medical insanity. He escaped once, in March 1968, during transfer, and was recaptured in a few days, during which he held four people hostage and raped one woman. During the original trial, he described the incident in detail. He showed little or no remorse for the murder of Catherine Genovese at his last parole hearing. Moseley is 78 years old and has been denied parole 15 times. It has been nearly half a century. He will sit again before the parole board in November 2013.
Finally, here's another quote from an author unknown
May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, superficial relationships, so that we will live deep within our hearts.
May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people so that we will work for justice, equality and peace.
May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we will reach out our hands to comfort them and change their pain into joy.
And may God bless us with the foolishness to think that we can make a difference in the world, so that we will do the things which others tell us cannot be done.
P.S.
A great deal of the above is sourced from Gladwell's aforementioned book, and the largest online free encyclopedia.
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