Bystander Effect

We were at Ikea today on the busiest day in the history of my visit there. Ikeans were practically walking shoulder to shoulder, almost zombielike. It was so crowded, I found myself several times separated from Mr Khan by the mob of Ikeans walking along the store route. I honestly never thought that was even possible. There were even repeated announcements made by Ikea requesting for a medical doctor available in the crowd. Mr Khan said that the photo I took above reminded him of the Safa and Marwa walk. Now that I've illustrated to you how crowded New Year at Ikea was, let me get back to my point.

After we exited Ikea empty-handed (7 our of 10 times we do haha), we walked towards Ikano to escape the crowd. We went to use the praying room there which was sparse when I entered it. By the time I finished ablution, there was suddenly a flash of people herding the room, some with young kids. I found a cramped spot for myself between prostrating women and by the time I was done, a little girl and her younger brother were sitting behind me with the boy playing some iPad game with the music on.

It wasn't annoying loud, but it was obviously loud enough to distract the congregation from focusing on their prayer. The women looked on but said nothing. I looked around and couldn't see an older guardian with them, assuming that she could be praying on taking ablution. So I gently told them to keep the volume down, and his sister quickly lowered the volume for him. Suddenly he went ballistic at the sister for doing so and eventually made a scene by the time I was walking out of the room.

I related the whole incident to Mr Khan, who chided me for "sticking my nose where it shouldn't be". I told him the women were distracted by the noise from the game and he asked me, "Did anyone else say anything?" I told him no, because I already did. They were looking at the kids, so obviously they were distracted. He kept saying, no one said anything, and it wasn't my place to say anything.

I was disturbed by his stance. I related to him the story of Kitty Genovese, whose murder was an early example of a social psychological phenomenon called the bystander effect. Of course, in my situation, there was no murder. There was no crime or any life being at risk at all. But it is all the same situation, where a group of people know that something has to be said or done about what's going on, but refuse to take the responsibility of being the one to initiate any reaction or to point it out.

Mr Khan eventually agreed that someone had to say something, and decided that their mother, instead of me, should be the one to speak to them. From there, we moved from discussing diffusion of responsibility to the lack of responsibility at all among today's parents. Oh well, the conversation was rather interesting, I must admit. But it only makes me realise that it takes more than just a competitive sperm and a fertile egg to be parents. And perhaps, by not allowing us to produce kids together, we are being saved from the impending risk of becoming incompetent parents.

I can dwell on and on about this parenting option thingy, but I shall save that in yet another mundane post.

Teehee.