The Bystander Effect Social Experiment
[3:35]
BYSTANDER EFFECT…. and other memes we don’t control, with religion being only one of many….. I’m an Atheist, but repeating, this is not a criticism of religious believers. My favorite line when blogging about this topic being…. ‘I’m more than happy to drive my mother to church’ as people must be free to believe whatever they want if they do not intend to harm others… Human nature is vastly complex to just blindly criticize anyone who thinks differently to me. It’s not for ‘everyday’ people to even begin understanding the intricate wiring of 100 billion neurons in the brain that form identity and belief, yet we are fooled into thinking we have full control with some kind of ease.
The only intention of The Mind Voyager is to highlight all of our bias potential despite some blogs written in a controversial manner…Controversy is used to ignite debate and conversation and nothing more.. Biases, the main theme……Most of us are not ‘good’ or ‘bad’, instead we are just a pattern forming brain that ultimately wants to survive…
We evolved into advanced apes with creative minds, fooling ourselves often, unable to see the multiple contradictions we have as we perfect the act of showing in a self-believing paradox the ‘righteous’ perception of ourselves. We are simply, subconsciously guided to follow a variety of memes, all sorts of memes conveniently as part of an act and righteous we are often not.
Clear patterns of conformity where a bias towards a religion is only one of many ways where all humans conform. This next observation which I’ve used a few times now but important to repeat, should make religious believers uneasy, provoking very much needed question to themselves, of whether they made an actual choice or just slipped nicely into a conformity pattern without realizing…(Brasil 80% Catholic / India 60% Hindu / Pakistan 90% Islam / Japan and South Korea less than 10% Islam or Christian / Haiti 50% practice voodoo and so on)…. Clear patterns of religiosity, very different to each other all over the globe. In the same way though, that believers do not really choose their religious faith as the stat patterns clearly indicate, all people, believers or not mirror a variety of conformity patterns as shown here in the video with the BYSTANDER EFFECT social experiment.
An invisible psychological shield guiding the masses to appropriately avoid a potentially very sick person, conveniently turning a blind eye as most go about their business, ignoring. The fear of standing out from the crowd and potentially placing themselves into some sort of socially awkward situation prevents them from even checking to see if a fellow human being is okay, who they can see and hear being in need of help desperately.
This should alert some Atheists who want to aggressively criticize so called ‘stupid’ and ‘irrational’ religious folk. Atheists for sure will be conforming appropriately in many ways in an innocently ignorant manner avoiding reason to suit, including the Bystander effect, if not with the religious majority. We humans fear the negative response of others constantly and act in a zillion ways through each day appropriately to avoid that negative perception with the consequences that may bring about. We are actors, and that act is very much reality in our own minds eye! ‘I AM GOOD!’ …. We are conveniently good when it is safe to be so is closer to the truth for most of us… I put myself in that category for sure!. Both Atheists and religious are susceptible to walking past the victim. Reason or the good words of Jesus meaning nothing at that given moment… the perception of others the most important in such scenarios instead.
I touch on this theme often, repeating, but by using different video examples to highlight how susceptible we are to being puppets without realizing it in so many different ways. I hope I’m creating more clarity about human nature by changing up the examples. The End game is liberation… To observe ourselves and others honestly and not conveniently through our fear riddled subconscious mind feeding us false and convenient realities is the key to progress. We can slowly release ourselves out of blinding defensive mode and in the process expanding our compassion which will be the byproduct of the new self-awareness. Then…. A BETTER WORLD WE CAN ALL ENJOY! 🙂
By Panayiotis Stavrou
[Video source: Psychology Tomorrow You Tube channel]
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