TWO BLOGS IN ONE WEEK?



Yeah. Lead Your Way is definitely upping the workload.

Alright, so. Bystander Behavior. The Behavior of Bystanding. Psychology at its finest. Here's the basic concept-

1) we witness something happening out of the ordinary (and for the sake of the argument, it's negative-)
2) we are outside the situation or the event
3) upon assessing the event, we either a) act, or b) do not act.

Simple, si?

Here's the thing though. Step 3? It's a loaded step.

Assessing the event is an extremely complicated process in our head. We're balancing whether or not it fits the social norms, whether it's justifiable and we are simply viewing it out of context, whether or not it would dangerous for us to intervene, whether physically or socially. This could be anything from traditional hazing to a biker essentially running over a pedestrian and then cycling away (which recently just happened on our campus).

Basically, it is a conflict between our sense of moral inclination and our fear of breaking the social norms- BINARY OPPOSITION! (learned that term in my film class last semester- that's right. I apply knowledge I learn in college #successfulsooner).

After going over this in class on Tuesday, my buddy and I were walking down the south oval, chilling and being chill and I got hit with a prime example of the Bystander Behavior. I saw a chain of keys hanging from a post. My thought process was as follows-

"Oh, keys."
"That could be bad."
"Nah, probably just one of the campus employees set their keys down."
"Yeah, he'll be right back."
"Yeah, this campus is pretty safe."

I mentally smacked myself in the head five minutes later when I recalled the Bystander Effect. So here's the deallll-

College students are in the transitory stage where they've just jumped out of the teenage years and they're about to plunge into REAL adult life- the time for habit making is now. So the question is, why is this not a habit college students are reinforcing?

One word, and it's a big one. SOCIAL. social social social. Our adult minds are still geared the way they were in high school- we weigh the potential social consequences for everything, and it paralyzes us!

And upon five minutes of reflective thinking, that, my fellow bloggers, is dumb.

So, bloggers, I leave you with this- Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Seize the opportunity to step up, and while I by no means endorse reckless abandon, don't let the social fear own your life.

YOU own your life.

That's all. BYE BLOG!