wfgodot
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James Fallows, in The Atlantic, compares the situation with the recent travesty in Foshan China, in which 18 passersby did not help a two-year-old lying injured in the street:
The specifics of the moral choice for onlookers obviously differ: in China, it was a random assortment of people faced with an out-of-nowhere decision in a few seconds of real time. At Penn State, it was stewards of an organization convincing themselves to turn a blind eye over a period of years. But the results -- implicit decisions to distance oneself from responsibility for other people's suffering -- are similar. And while the Penn State case could be a trigger for larger concerns -- about bigtime sports culture, about the God-coach tradition of which Joe Paterno has been a main example, about unaccountable male-run hierarchies that seem to attract pederasts -- mainly we're reminded of human failings again. I tell myself that I would never have walked by an injured toddler -- or that I would never condone an episode like the one at Penn State quoted after the jump. But people who think of themselves as "good" did these things, which is mainly a sobering reminder of what we're all capable of. Mon semblable, mon frere.
more here: Moral Parallels: Foshan China, Penn State