While riding my bike, I heard brakes squeal and turned to see a car hit an old man. I rushed to help him. He was laying on the ground and bleeding. I took off my shirt to slow it down. He was okay, but losing a lot of blood.
A group of people gathered around us, talking on their cell phones with the police. I asked the man if he wanted to go to the hospital by ambulance or if he just wanted to take a car. He said he was alright and would prefer to travel by car. I asked if anyone could take him, and nobody would.
"Liability," some of them mumbled. "You shouldn't even touch him."
I reminded them that he would get to the hospital faster if someone would just drive us, but nobody volunteered. Needless to say, several fire engines showed up - lots of police, and the ambulance which finally took him away.
We have built a society where people won't help each other - because they don't have the equipment, or aren't certified to help. The people there would have let this man lay on the ground and bleed just so they couldn't be sued. And when help showed, it was total overkill. Why a fire engine? Why three of them?
I hate this society because I have no opportunity to be a kind person. Any helping action is either paid for or is grounds for a lawsuit.

-- Gil Benmoshe
(Adbusters - March/April 2004)

This couldn't have been a sadder parallel to my last post if I had engineered it myself. People are anonymous in our society because everyone - almost everyone, without question - has a deep-seated unspoken fear of reaching out. Of making contact. Of being human. The above scenario, I'm sure, replays itself in a thousand different ways for each of us every day, under the inescapable and completely accepted maxim of "don't get too close to others, or you'll probably have to deal with potentially messy results of some variety afterwards."

More people should be significance junkies when it comes to their relationships and how they view the world, I think; after all, real faith, I believe, is demonstrated by believing without question that there is more to life than we see, regardless of our personal religious and social inclinations. Faith can also be demonstrated by our believing that, in spite of such common societal leanings towards apathy and isolation, were we to collapse in the middle of a road, we would be tended to. I believe people are fundamentally good creatues. As a Christian, I am asked to believe that. As a person who is full of faults, but constantly seeking new ways to surpass them, I know it to be true for others and myself in kind. That is faith.