SYD's School of Thoughts

The Bystander effect

The bystander effect is watching some evil take place, but since we are watching with others who are watching, and no one seems to be doing anything about the evil, we go on watching and doing nothing about it. Instead of consulting our own feelings about what we do, we take our cue from the other bystanders. They are not doing anything. Therefore, we also do nothing. If something needed to be done, somebody would have done it.

Passivity is a thousand times more practical than stepping forward to take action. One attracts attention from enemy if one moves: if one freezes, the enemies in your line of sight continue killing whatever or whomever they have begun to kill and do not suddenly swing their attention to you. A lesson of the most ancient part of our brain is to stay still and nothing will get you.

Moral Drift

Moral drift is a particular and fascinating thing. A plain fear of being disliked if we stand apart from group flow.

Let us say that eight people are discussing slavery. One person is strongly against it. Four are strongly in favour. Three suppose it is ok, or maybe not: they are backyardists; they have no feel for the subject because it hasn't come up in their own lives, and they have poor imaginations, being self-centered. That's the ambience of the room. The one antislavery person makes a strong objection to slavery. People defend slavery. Others shrug. The antislavery person speaks again. The others keep giving one another more and more eye contact and less and less eye contact to this irritating speaker. Nothing makes a strong opinionated speaker yield so well as being denied eye contact. After 10 minutes or an hour or a week or two weeks, the sometime strong dissenter says, "Well, I suppose there are some instances where slavery might be all right, of course."

Attention-Deficient Syndrome (ADS)

Attention is a scarce resource. The total amount per capita is strictly limited. Ultimately then, what attention one person gets, someone else is denied. Attention goes both ways, eash time someone focuses directly or indirectly on anybody else, that can be thought of as a transaction in this economy - a transaction that usually doesn't involve money.

Attention addresses a fundamental human desire. Let's suppose you woke up one morning, well supplied with food and other material essentials, but invisible and inaudible, unable to get noticed in any way at all. At first, it could be quite amusing to spy and eavesdrop, to see what you're not suppose to. But no matter what you discovered, not being able to share your encounters with anyone would soon become torture. Living without feedback, even in the lap of luxury, would be a pain.

This explains why many of us are working harder and harder to get some. So as to be noticed by the largest possible audience - or by an audience of peers whose attention we value most, ADS people normally resort to doing stupid actions, speaking loudly, announcing your feelings, loudhailing your complains, commenting on every little thing you can etc etc etc, the list is endless. Keeping attention transactions equitable in the future will be no easier than keeping cash transaction equitable today. A spendthrift will allow a few people to monopolise her attention. Or to lavish it on someone who can't give it back - say, Elvis. Similiarly, a person will do everything so to monopolise the market for attention.

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Conclusion? These three things are present and true. The fact that i am typing away at the computer to post this blog entry shows that i am demanding for your attention as well. All these 3 things are what made the society and the people around us so disgusting. But who will want to point out all these problems? No one. 'Instead of consulting our own feelings about what we do, we take our cue from the other bystanders. They are not doing anything. Therefore, we also do nothing. If something needed to be done, somebody would have done it.' And, the ones that will stand out from the crowd will be given 'less and less eye contact'. And what makes everything more disgusting is the presence of backyardist. Staying neutral all the time will do them no harm, so why not? After one particular party emerge as winners of the arguement, they will then agree and go ahead with the crowd. Or if one person successfully monopolise attention, the backyardist will also give in to this monopoly, instead of standing against the monopoly and get shun. Anyone ever wonder where does the small firms goes if there is really such a monopoly existing? Monopoly is against the principle of allocative efficiency and is a market failure. But does anyone want to correct it? No. Why? Why not. Bystander, moral drift, backyardist.

Summary? Life sucks.