The price of doing nothing

Today I saw on the news that a little girl got run down and no one did anything about it for far too long. The only way the world knows about this is that it was recorded and placed on Internet for all to see. I suspect that this sort of thing happens far to often and that it goes unreported. In our past we often never heard about such things because we previously lived in a world that didn't have the capability to instantly record, transmit and view. This draws me to thinking about something I thought about a while ago. If we know of a tragic event that falls on someone we know it hits us far more then if we hear about a tragic event that falls on 100 people we don't. It's like from our lives we have rings of emotional distance that radiate from us and that tragic events that happen father away from us effect us less. What's different about viewing it is that it brings the tragic event as close as if we viewed it first hand. I was shocked and horrified and felt helpless to help this child. I wanted to yell at those people who just drove and rode by without even bothering to stop. I imagined the children of those people suffering the same way. This little girl who never had a chance at a happy life was treated worse then an animal. It made me think that we have all paid a terrible price for understanding how some people can be incredibly indifferent to the plight of the vulnerable. We like to think of ourselves as living in a world that people on the whole treat others how they like to be treated. We hope that if our child was in trouble, and for some reason out of reach for us to help, that a neighbour would help until we could arrive. We are relieved when we read about reports of people putting themselves in harms-way to help another in need. We pay tribute and reward those who commit acts of bravery that save many without consideration of the danger they place themselves in. Then something like this pulls us down from our lofty opinion that everyone else would do the same as we would. This little girl has shockingly shown us that we as a civilization have a long way to go in order to call ourselves civilized. We have all paid a price for this despicable act. What this poor girl has paid with her life our civilization has paid for in our thinking. We have all been demoralized by the indifference that has been paid to her. For every time a person past, we all as civilization took a giant step back in justifying ourselves as an enlightened society. This Innocent child has just shown us that we are just one step away from the animals that surround us. What she paid for with her life to show us is a price that, we as a civilization, can not afford to pay. We must resolve ourselves in knowing that for every act that raises our hopes in thinking we are an enlightened people, there are single acts like this that make us think that we are no different then the animals we try to raise ourselves higher than.  To paraphrase a quote:
 We must forever fight against the dieing of the light of hope that someday we can justifingly call ourselves an enlightened society