07 December 2009

Good Samaritans

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/12/06/bc-good-samaritan-stabbing.html?ref=rss

My thank you to these brave men who were injured trying to help a woman who was being abused. If more people (not just men), were so brave, abusers might not be so bloody brazen.

I'm sorry they had to see just how far these men can go.

Growing up, I learned from my parents to Never Get Involved. I always felt vaguely wrong for not calling the cops if I could hear something awful going on, and I decided I wouldn't be that person when I got older. I've had to call the police a few times - neighbours usually, beating the hell out of each other. Or in one case, neighbour being beaten by her boyfriend. That situation got to the point that one morning, I was jolted out of bed by a bang type of earthquake and I thought, "Holy shit, she finally killed him. Or vice versa." I don't know what good I've done, if any. Maybe I've made things worse, like my parents said I would. But I've always had to try. The idea that someone could be beaten to death while I just sat there and tried not hear it? Unfathomable.

But Mom and Dad's idea of not getting involved is what keeps us from helping out the people in the third world, isn't it? Or is it simply apathy? Or greed? I dunno. What I can't understand is how we can stand by and let people suffer needlessly. I cannot fathom the reasoning. More of us need to be like those two guys who stepped in to help a woman they didn't know. But on a global level.