Last night as I walked into town with my friend we saw a man and a woman having a huge argument in the street. The man was pushing the woman around and she was clearly getting more and more distressed. The disturbing fact was that the general population was, of course, refusing to acknowledge what was happening right in front of them, and simply walking on by.
My friend and I walked up to them and simply asked the woman if she needed any help. She looked quite relieved, and all we had to do was walk her to her the train station and put her on the train. As there were 2 of us the man did not even cause as much of a stink as I expected. If I had been told to mind my own business, I would have done just that. But when someone is asking for help, and are totally ignored...
I was completely shocked by the passerby attitude, even though I have seen it thousands of times before. I've been mugged in a busy crowded street before, and then when I went and asked some guy who had seen the whole thing for some change to use the phone, he blanked me and walked right through me.
Has society become so used to the idea that the police are there to deal with our problems that we can no longer help each other out? I think there's a lot of people out there who wouldn't even bother calling the police, assuming that someone else would do even that! I sometimes think if there were no police, the population would look after themselves, but that would almost be anarchy wouldn't it?