Don McMinn

In the film Christopher Robin, Christopher asks Pooh, “What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?”

“‘Well, said Pooh, what I like best’—and then he had to stop and think. Because although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.” 

Every December, my family and I fly to London and sail back to the States on the Queen Mary 2. It is a wonderful family tradition. Last year (2021), Covid made the trip very challenging. Several family members needed new passports but the passport office was so backed up we had to wait until the day before the trip to walk into a passport office and hopefully walk out with renewed passports. We got the passports five hours before our plane left. We all needed a negative Covid to board the plane, another negative test within 48 hours of arriving in London, another before we boarded the ship and another before disembarking in New York City. There were many hurdles that could have hijacked the trip. 

Fortunately, all went well and all five of us boarded the ship. When we had dinner together the first night, there was a collective euphoria about having made it. What we felt was what Pooh was trying to describe: Sometimes anticipating an event and striving to make it happen has its own reward. 

Sometimes the journey is as satisfying as reaching the destination and often, a difficult journey makes the arrival even more rewarding.

When we know others are present, we feel less responsible to act, a phenomenon known as diffusion of responsibility. (Kida p221)

In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was assaulted, raped, and murdered outside her New York City apartment. First, she was stabbed twice, and although she screamed for help, no one came to her rescue, even though 38 witnessed the tragedy. The bystanders didn’t even call the police.

Following this shocking event, researchers wanted to understand why no one responded. After much research, two social psychologists, John Darley and Bibb Latané, published insight into a socio-psychological phenomenon called diffusion of responsibility (also called the bystander effect). 

The bystander effect is the phenomenon in which the presence of people (i.e., bystanders) influences an individual’s likelihood of helping a person in an emergency situation. Specifically, Darley and Latané hypothesized that as the number of people who are present in an emergency situation increases, the less likely it is that any single individual will help someone in need. The findings suggest that in the case of an emergency, when people believe that there are other people around, they are less likely or slower to help a victim because they believe someone else will take responsibility.

For the most part, when we are by ourselves, individuals are eager to help others and look out for one another. But when we get in a group, we’re reluctant to take action. How is it that kind and loving people can see a problem and not respond?

One cause for hesitation may be people’s lack of confidence or competence. Or, they may think others in the group would be better at helping. Another cause is thinking surely, someone else will act. Or, when other bystanders do nothing, people may think there’s no real need to help out.

In May 2020 I was guilty of diffusion of responsibility. I was shopping at Walgreens when a man fell to the floor having a seizure. About five customers, including me, did nothing but stare at him for about a minute. It was at the onset of the Covid pandemic and I remember wondering if this was a violent reaction to the virus, in which case I should not intervene without proper protective gear. I did call 911, but in retrospect I wish I had offered physical help and assurance. 

Have you ever fallen prey to the diffusion of responsibility? 

A more subtle expression of this disorder is the thought—When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible. We’re often passive or slow to respond to a need because it’s not our specific job—it’s everyone’s job. 

In the future I’m going to be more responsive in emergency situations.

Last week someone asked my opinion about the college student debt debacle we have in our country. I started to offer a half-baked response based on bits and pieces of what I’ve heard in the media. But I paused, and then said, “I don’t have an opinion about that.” A longer, more accurate response would have been, “I don’t have an intelligent, informed viewpoint about that. I’ve not done the necessary research to substantiate an opinion.”

How long has it been since you said, “I don’t have an opinion about that”? It’s a phrase we should use more often.

Consider…

1. You don’t need to have an opinion about everything. Selectively choose the topics you’re willing to pursue and leave the others alone. Some topics are trivial and an impromptu response is fine: If someone asks my point of view about a movie or restaurant, I’ll respond without thinking much about it.
2. We should have an opinion about important issues. Don’t be intellectually lazy and neglect developing convictions; it takes time and effort to properly research a topic.
3. Form your opinions slowly and base them on facts. Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Daniel Moynihan famously said “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  Wouldn’t it be nice if our opinions were informed by facts and not assumptions. (I know…the challenge these days is deciphering fact from fiction).
4. Don’t finalize your opinion until you’ve researched at least two opposing positions regarding an issue. On many issues, we start with a biased position (often suggested by which cable news channel we watch, our family of origin, or our political persuasion). Prior to solidifying your stance, you should be able to argue both sides of an issue.
5. Hold your opinion lightly and be open to change. I’m always amazed how highly intelligent people often espouse opposing views. For instance, there are Nobel-Prize winning economists who believe austerity is the solution to a troubled national economy and there are Nobel-Prize winning economists who believe subsidies are the solution.  
6. Be respectful of other peoples’ opinions. What are the chances that you are 100% correct in all your opinions and convictions? The answer is obvious—0%. So proceed with humility and remain malleable.

So, what is your opinion about this post? 🙂

On June 3, 2017, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts gave the commencement speech at his son’s ninth-grade graduation from Cardigan Mountain School—a New Hampshire boarding school for boys in grades six through nine.

It was not a typical commencement speech full of platitudes and cliches. Here’s a transcript of part of his speech.

“Commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I’ll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come,

• I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice.
• I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty.
• Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted.
• I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.
• And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship.
• I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others.
• I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion.
• Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”

Let’s visit about that last phrase, “your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”

When bad or unfortunate things happen to us, we usually get mad, sad, discouraged, revengeful, cynical…but do we learn from these experiences? Do we become better people because of the misfortunes? We should, because if we don’t we’ll forfeit the valuable lessons that difficult times offer.

Sometimes, we learn more from misfortune than we do from fortune. For instance, consider Roberts’ phrase “I hope you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty.” We can be surrounded by loyal friends and colleagues and soon take them for granted and mistakenly believe that we’re entitled to such kindness and will always have it. Then we feel the pangs of betrayal, and suddenly realize what a gift loyalty is and even begin to evaluate our loyalty to others.

We should make a list of the disappointments we have experienced in life and beside each one record the lesson learned. If we didn’t learn anything when it happened, we can learn now.

Here’s a transcript of Roberts’ entire speech.

Here’s a video of his speech.