black friday

If you have kept up with the news recently you probably heard the unfortunate incident regarding a worker at a Wal-Mart in New York who was killed in the crush of people entering the store where he was working on the morning of Black Friday. I don't know many details beyond what is relayed in the video below. Some of the news reports that came out indicated that only his coworkers stopped to help and that almost everyone else more or less ignored him on the way to their sales.

My first reaction on hearing this was what I think most peoples' reaction was. How could so many people be so careless with another human life as to not even stop to see if he was okay or help him get out of the throng of people? Upon wondering how so many people walked past the man I started to contemplate an uncomfortable possibility. Would I have walked past the man? I don't think I would, but is that only because I don't want to think that I would?

I have read reactions from several people regarding this incident and the main thing almost everyone seems to have in common not necessarily a concern for the man's family or a question of what they would do in that situation. Most people's first priority is to react in outrage at the shoppers who were at the incident. I have already stated that this was my initial reaction as well. While I do not condone the shoppers' actions, there are a couple of reasons why I think this specific focus is unwise.

First and foremost, I am surprised that so many people assume that they would have stopped to help the man. It is a rare person who, when they are on a very tight schedule, will stop and check on someone who might be in need. When people get into a mob mentality, they are even less likely to help out. I believe that it is unlikely that most of the people who have expressed outrage would have stopped to help the man, either, had they been at that store that morning. I suspect that none of the shoppers who were there thought this man was seriously injured. I, perhaps naively, believe that more people would have stopped to help if they realized that this was actually a life and death situation. Regardless, it seems like a better use of energy to contemplate what I would do in that situation and resolve to be the rare person who will stop and help the person in need than to just get angry at the people involved in the incident.

Second, any outrage that I express about this is meaningless anyway. Why get angry in a way that benefits no one? If anything, it is detrimental because I get to pretend that I am better than the people I am outraged about. I wonder if that is why so many people like to get worked up about such unfortunate incidents. They can feel like saints compared to the people who instigated such horrible crimes.

By my calculation, the best things that I can do when I hear stories such as these are to express grief for the family and resolve to be a better person because of this incident. That is what I am going to try to do.