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Depraved Indifference?

You know how sometimes you see someone trip and fall and there's that split second where you think "should I help or should I pretend I didn't see anything"? That moment when your usual instinct of ignoring strangers wars with the part of you that knows you really ought to do something.

Well, increase that by a factor of 10 and remove that pesky conscience, and you've got today's society.

Last night in front of an audience of hundreds at a presentation at the University of Southern California, TV personality Bill Nye -- popularly known as the "Science Guy" -- collapsed midsentence as he walked toward a podium. Early indications are that Nye is OK, but what's odd about the incident isn't so much Nye's slight health setback as the crowd's reaction. Or, more precisely, its nonreaction, according to several accounts.

It appears that the students in attendance, rather than getting up from their seats to rush to Nye's aid, instead pulled out their mobile devices to post information about Nye's loss of consciousness.

...
Still, in the annals of the digital public's civic indifference, the Nye incident is nowhere near as disturbing as another episode reported in New Orleans earlier this week, which oddly enough also involved a humorist. Anthony Barre, a New Orleans man popular for his acid-tongued comic performances on YouTube using the handle "Messy Mya," was murdered on the streets of the city's 7th Ward -- the historically Creole neighborhood chronicled in the HBO series "Treme." As he lay dying, witnesses at the scene took to the Internet to chronicle the tragedy in real time, even posting photos of his body lying in a pool of blood.

I hope i remember this feeling of disgust and shame next time someone needs help. I'm afraid that it's more likely that Mr. Bennett was right and that "it will pass away soon enough".