Wednesday 6 November 2019

Apathy

I've had an interesting learning experience with apathy these last couple of weeks.

See, three of us (that I know of) were hit by the car bad guy, and so we put up notices and talked to neighbours and to the building manager and, well, everyone just kind of shrugged.

As in no one seems to have put away the stuff they leave out behind their cars, and someone took down the notices and signs (I suspect the manager on that one).

I was talking to one of the burgled neighbours and we both noticed that the only ones who seem to really care are those of us who were directly affected, and so I guess I understand how people can be apathetic about things.

I mean, no one wants to get their car broken into, no one wants stuff stolen from them.  But just like me, until it's actually happened to you it's this sort of "well, ok, but I'm fine" sort of thing. 

Jason thinks I should get a baseball bat to walk myself from the car to the door since I told him I didn't feel safe getting home late the other night.  But to me that feels a little bit too.... I dunno... living in fear or something?  It's weird trying to find some sort of balance.  I'm sure eventually, assuming the guy stays away, that the fear and alertness will fade.  But yeah, it's interesting to notice who cares and who only sort of kind of cares.

Maybe a small life lesson there.

2 comments:

Jason Langlois said...

A baseball bat seems like too much.

I've sometimes wondered if the reason why crime stats say crime is down is less because crime is actually down, and more because people are just fatigued by the fact that reporting crimes seems to have zero impact. So they don't report all the crime that's happening, and it's disappeared from the statistics and gives the illusion everything is fine.

The recent spike in property and petty crime reporting in Victoria feels like its the result of people actually getting fed up and finally reporting all the crap that's happening.

Victoria said...

I also know that while I got through on the non emergency line pretty quickly the first time I used it, I gave up trying to report something else due to the wait time. My neighbour also said she found the wait time frustrating.

It's interesting to me that each time my neighbour has talked to the non emergency line they've said "Call 911 next time"....