What defines a "Good Person" ?

I read a story in the L A Times over the weekend about two women, apparently in a relationship, who were arrested and charged with the torture of one of their children, a 5 year old boy. They withheld food, burned him on his genitals with cigarettes, and treated him in a manner that was reprehensible. It was hard to read, and difficult to comprehend how a mother could abuse her own child in such a horrible manner. And then I came across this story, linked by Crime Scene Kansas City.



A man stops his truck in the middle of a road. He walks around to the passenger side of his vehicle. Snatches a toddler out of the car seat, and proceeds to stomp and beat the child to death in the middle of the road. Witnesses say they attempted to stop the man but claim he was so intent on what he was doing that he didn't pay any attention to them. A sheriffs deputy in a helicopter was the first on the scene. They land, order the guy to stop, he ignores the deputy, the deputy shoots him dead. Take a minute to get your head around all of that, I know I had to.





After reading the Modesto papers report, I looked around and found this one. The paper says that people passing by called 911, apparently at least one of them, a fireman physically tried to stop the guy, but this was well in to the beating and probably too late. The thing is, several people apparently witnessed this and called it in, but did little to nothing to intervene. There is an often repeated line about how you never know how you will react in a situation unless you actually go through it. Bullshit. Some situations, like a baby getting stomped in the street, are no brainers. Any decent human being knows how they would react in this situation, you would stop it, at any cost. If it meant caving this animals skull in with whatever you could pick up, or possibly being attacked yourself, how could anyone do less than that. The report doesn't say anyone ever attempted to get their hands on the child and run with him, the report doesn't say that these people calling 911 did much of anything.



Then we have the story of an old man hit by a car in Hartford Conn.. A surveillance tape catches it all. Witnesses again do nothing. One guy circles him on his bike and continues on about his business. In the tape you see people walk by like the guy isn't laying in the middle of the street. Cars drive around him, people gawk from the sidewalk, but do nothing.

I know what you are thinking. Okay MM, you have depressed me and impressed upon me Mans inhumanity to Man, so whats your point?

We are a society of do gooders. We save the seals, we feed the children, we walk for breast cancer, we trick or treat for UNICEF, whatever, pick your cause. Now these are all good things to do, every single one of them is a noble cause, but...............,there is this other side to people. We don't want to get involved, when it really matters. We especially don't want to get involved if it means putting ourselves in harms way. Before anyone takes this as a personal assault on their character let me be clear, I'm not referring to anyone directly, but society in general. I hope and believe that many of us would do whats right, and not just turn their head the other way. But society as a whole , as evidenced by these two stories, is unwilling to really help, if helping means putting yourself in harms way.

People slip a buck to a homeless guy on the corner and tell themselves they are GOOD. We give to some cause and believe it makes us decent people. We do a little something, and walk away feeling better about ourselves. I'm not knocking that, I do it myself, but that doesn't necessarily make me a good person. It also doesn't make someone a bad person, but lets face it, giving a few bucks here and there doesn't make a real difference to the giver or the receiver. It's just something we do automatically, to assuage guilt or because we feel pity for someone.

The people who did little to nothing in these two stories are not good people. they can tithe to the church or go work in a soup kitchen, or do whatever passes for their definition of charity, but it doesn't change reality. the reality is this. When it really mattered, when they could have really done something, they did nothing. When all of these people were calling 911 as a man stomped a child to an unrecognizable pulp, not one of them stopped the guy. Nobody tackled him, nobody picked something up and split his head open, nobody tried to grab the child and run away, not one of these people did enough, until the fireman and police arrived. As an old man laid in the middle of a busy city street, nobody rushed out to check on him, or hold his hand to comfort him, nobody did enough. These were not good people, and that's all there is to it.