The recent incident where five teenage boys from Cocoa Florida recorded a video of a man drowning is not shocking anymore.
Huffington Post reported that the local Chief of Police Michael Cantaloupe would charge them using legislation traditionally reserved for medical examiners. Other outlets such as CNN say the teens cannot be charged since there are no laws in Florida “where a citizen is obligated to render aid or call for help for anyone in distress.”
We seem to be going backwards. Instead of seeing the results of years of regulations and judicial systems, we seem to rely more and more on them trying to make us better people. The fact that we are making the conversation about how we do not have regulation that can enforce the lack of humanity of people just shows we are seeing things the wrong way. We keep asking states and laws to do the job that society and parents have not been able to do.
There comes a point where witnessing reality and not living in it, becomes the rule. We got there by years of growing insensitive to what others suffered. As we gained exposure to more and more information as to what happened to people worldwide, we should have also developed more empathy. We are now able to see and hear first hand what happens to people all around the world, almost as it happens. Yet, maybe too much fantasy and all those screens have made us used to seeing misery and trouble as entertainment.
This is not to blame the media as we could easily do. This is not to blame technology for them being able to record it, or social media because they went viral. This is a wake up call, as many others, that we seem to keep nullifying because it’s inconvenient for us. Awesome vicious cycle huh?
New generations are growing more and more insensitive to what they see and hear. They are also becoming less tolerating and patient, less resourceful, and we are all to blame.
When was the last time you told a friend or relative to stop laughing at something that they thought was funny, but was actually offensive? When was the last time you explained to a teenager that the guy falling down the stairs actually got seriously hurt after that viral video? It is not just what we see, or what we deem right or wrong. This is a matter of all the people in different groups of society that keep hoping that someone else will say “no” or that someone else will admit they are responsible for educating children and teenagers.
It is our responsibility. We are to blame, and luckily we do not need laws to catch up, we can do it ourselves. Be the voice of reason to someone today. You never know… Maybe they’ll be the ones who will call for help instead of recording someone’s death.
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