Neighbor, if you have found yourself waiting for someone to jump in and do something, you have fallen prey to the bystander effect.
You may think you know what the bystander effect is, but did you know that, for many people, it’s an automatic ancestral script that shuts down your thinking brain and moves you into compliance? Probably not. But you know who absolutely does know about the bystander effect? Serial abusers.
The reason serial abusers so brazenly and publicly harm others is because they know an odd little factoid: the more people who see them commit an offense, the less likely it is that any of those people will intervene. Read that twice.
Atrocities happen not because the abusers are unstoppable but because they are coasting on the bystander effect. Whether they mean to or not, those individuals who say “I wish there were something I could do,” and then go on to do nothing, are enabling atrocity.
This podcast episode offers some insight on how to break up with the bystander effect and empower yourself to intervene— because every single one of us has something they can offer the pro-democracy movement.
You have the potential to save your neighbors’ lives. Use it.
All it takes is recognizing that serial abusers are hacking your brain’s freeze response to stay in power and then telling yourself a truth that lies just under the surface: you are the kind of person who intervenes in the face of suffering.
ICYMI: Here’s the Two-Part Plan on How We Get Free
If you’re new to Letters from a Weirdo, you might’ve missed what are, perhaps, my most important episodes, which describe a two part plan to bring this genocidal machine to a halt, save our neighbors, and reclaim our collective liberation. We don’t have to live like this. You and I have the collective capacity to topple this regime and build a government that works for all of us. It’s way past time to stop fascist elites from gobbling up our lives and hurting our neighbors:
Part 1: The Bill Passed. Now What?
Part 2: How We End This
