“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou salt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander”
Holocaust Museum, Washington DC
October 13th afternoon around 5:30, a car accident occurred in Huangqi, China. The victim was a 2 year old girl who was run over by a van, which then fled the scene while she lay bloodied. Over the next 7 minutes, 17 passerbys walked past her and did nothing. It took the 18th person, an old woman who was a garbage scavenger, to rush to the aid of the kid and bring her to the hospital. She now lies in coma, has been declared brain dead and could die anytime.
A few weeks ago I was in the bus, on my way to school. Being rush hour, it was packed with students. At one of the stops, one of the passengers who entered the bus was an elderly man, old enough to be offered a seat. Though the only one who offered it to him was a middle aged woman. The rest of the students were either swiping away at their iphones, sleeping or staring into blank space.
There is a wide gulf between these two events. Though fundamentally, they deal with the same issue, that is a growing selfishness or more precisely, a growing lack of concern for the people or the things around us.
I do not want to define selfishness. Everyone knows just too well what that is. And we all are united when it comes to stamping out the selfish people around us. I bet all those students who were in the bus with me would agree with me. In fact, perhaps so would all those passerbys in China.
That would just make all of us mere hypocrites. I admit in my life I have had and still have my selfish moments, After all I am human. However, there are certain boundaries that I do not let my selfishness cross because we live to uphold certain values, values that we consider to be more important than our own lives.
It is when we start to place our lives in front of these values that selfishness takes over. That is when we truly start to decline as a human race. In fact, if one thinks about it, selfishness is the cause of all the world’s problems. We care about ourselves, we care about OUR comfort. To maximise OUR comfort, we try to make more money. The result, you have insanely rich bankers, CEO’s and politicians while billions languish in poverty, hunger and disease. To make more money, we cheat more people, selling them stuff that they do not need, which means more waste and more screwing up of the environment for future generations. But what do we care about future generations? Our concern is only the present, that is the moment WE are living in now.
Then again, some may argue that the world is more compassionate. Students are doing countless hours of CIP. People are contributing billions to charities. Though, if one thinks at a deeper level, is this a god measure of kindness? I am sure all those university students in ha bus with me had done their fair share of CIP. But what does it count for if none of them bothered to offer their seat to that old man?
What that is truly needed is, as a good friend of mine mentioned, for one to be an advocator of good. Which means to go beyond being a mere do-good-once-in-a-while person to someone who knows that when required to stand up for what is right or to stand against what is wrong, he will be there. That awareness and self-assurance is in itself the first step to step out of the selfish zone. After that the simple acts, such as offering ones seat to the elderly all counts to your karmic points (though that is not the final aim).
Though at the end of the day, I feel that our world is to some extent beyond hope. Mainly because the very people controlling it are the masters of selfishness. Which makes me wonder what is the point of living? And which to some extent makes me scared to be a father in the future as the world I will be living in then would never be the right place for a child to grow up. Though it is in these questions that I find my answers.
Why live?
Because for every 100 of them, I know there will always be a few good men.
And therin lies some hope for this world.
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