Scarier than London Bombings IV
I find this article in the Guardian more worrying than the 7/7 bombings in many ways.
This is because it shows how we’ve become desensitised in ordinary life, and we can let indifference, fear and effort become real obstacles to helping somoneone obviously in need, in saving some one’s life.
The article describes how no one helped a stabbed man on a bus.
It’s also just the type of indifference that I hope my writing and all good theatre fights against. If theatre is about the human condition, then good theatre can celebrate and inspire what is the best in humans.
[see Nadia's comments where it looks like people did stop to help. She raises the good point that it is the media re-telling which is quite scary. Although I seem to remember it was written by the real person as a non-paid non-journalist]
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One Response to “Scarier than London Bombings IV”
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About me
I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.
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Recent Work
Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).
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Nakamitsu
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Yellow Gentlemen
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I read this article and it really disturbed me as well, especially as I already have an aversion to late-night buses!
However, a few days after this story emerged, a woman wrote to the Metro letters page explaining that not only had she stopped to help, but so had four others. Her jumper (which had supported the man’s head) was now with the police as evidence. Further, she explained that by the time anyone realised how serious this incident was, most people had left the scene.
Of course, it still remains the case that most of those on the bus did leave whilst a man was bleeding, and not many witnesses have come forward since, but having read more than one account of this incident, I am more concerned about what a story such as this does to people’s nerves especially coming as it does in a sensitive time.
I wonder if a story like this, perhaps one version of the bigger picture, emerging pieces at a time, only makes travellers more fearful, mistrustful and ultimately saddened to imagine that they might not be helped if their time of need came.
I do think, in this case, as with many others, that perhaps it is not the events themselves of which we should be most afraid, but the media’s retelling/version of them.