The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

One of my more nerdy habits is listening to college lectures on iTunes U. I've found that the best iTunes U lectures usually come from arch rivals Stanford and Berkeley and that, while usually strong in content, Yale's lectures just don't seem all that intriguing. Perhaps iTunes just isn't a good medium for Yale. My favorite courses are history (Standford gets the edge here) and psychology (Berkeley wins this subject, though). I probably listen to more psychology--lectures from several different universities, in fact--than any other subject because I just think it's a really interesting field, especially social psychology. There is no course of social psychology to which I've listened that doesn't spend more than a fair amount of time discussing the murder of Kitty Genovese.

You can read the account of her death by clicking the above link to Wikipedia, but here it is in brief: Kitty Genovese is walking home in the early morning hours, around 3:00 AM. She is stabbed by Winston Mosley and screams out. Lights come on in the surrounding apartment buildings and her attacker runs off. No one comes out to help her. No one calls the police. (By some accounts, a call is made to the police after the first attack, but the police consider it a low priority situation.) The lights are turned back off. The attacker then returns to stab her again. Kitty Genovese screams out. Lights come on. No one comes to help. Whether or not there was a third attack seems to be disputed. While she lay dying, Mosley sexually assaults her.Eventually, though, the police are called. Kitty Genovese, taken away by ambulance at 4:15 AM, dies on the way to the hospital.

Psychologists noted, some time after the fact, I think, that the reason no one called the police or moved to more closely examine the situation was due to the social psychological phenomena Diffusion of Responsibility and Bystander Effect.

The story of Kitty Genovese's murder is fascinating, but it is also infuriating. Behind the social sciences, behind the college lectures, is a woman who lost her life. There is a real person who suffered, feared, plead for help, died. Psychologists have developed taxonomy to help us articulate why the people near her murder acted as they did, but when we stop hiding behind the science it boils down to the fact that loving the other more than the self comes with inherent risks that terrify us. It makes me angry that not one of the estimated 38 people who could have seen her stabbed did anything. I'd like to think that I would be different, that my faith would motivate to love others more than self, that I'd lay down my life for another...even a stranger.

But, my shameful--and I mean shameful--confession is that I've had a number of similar opportunities, but I acted just like those people who allowed the murder of Kitty Genevose. For this reason, for the remainder of this blog's life, I will not, hereafter, refer to this crime's victim as Kitty Genevose, or Mrs. Genovese, or the victim. I will not depersonalize her, treat her as an object to study. She will be, hereafter and always, Kitty.

When we lived in Vienna, we didn't own a car. We had a Vespa but never registered it with the proper authorities, so we never drove it and ended up selling it. We took public transportation (which is great, clean and extensive in Vienna) everywhere we went. On more than one occasion I saw a person passed out on the subway train and every single time, I stood around and stared. Just like everyone else. I wanted to something. At least, I wanted someone to do something.

I was too afraid. Or, perhaps, as one neighbor stated as to why he didn't call the police during Kitty's murder (though he admitted to having considered calling them before opting not to), "I didn't want to get involved."