There seems to be an inherent fallacy in human psychology that I choose to call "crowd cowardice." Let me explain what I mean by giving you an example. Say you'd one day see one of the smart, respectable people of your community getting beaten up by a group of angry teenagers. Suppose even further that there'd be lots of people standing around, watching it happening without doing anything. What would you do?

People today witness all kinds of problems going on around them without doing anything about it. It's become a trend to watch society fall apart while watching TV and eating popcorn. "Mind your own business" is the universal slogan of the 21st century. It's a disease that's handicapping us and robbing us of our dignity and self-respect as individuals.

Crowd cowardice is cowardice motivated by crowd psychology. This means that people don't act because either they expect someone else to step forward and do anything or simply because they're too afraid to do anything alone. Some people don't even care. Crowd cowardice cripples individuals and seems to strengthen fear when other people become paralyzed as well. It's as if the crowd itself makes it impossible to act on the situation.

I call this phenomenon a disease because it's a breakdown of civil responsibility and courage. The reason to why the crime rates are so high, people act selfishly and trust is record low among community citizens is that we don't see society as a unity anymore, but as a random collection of small atoms, each one living his/her separate life. This is never the case; in a community you depend upon other people doing their part to make things work. Anyone thinking otherwise is in denial.

Crowd cowardice is like a bubble world. It only lasts until someone breaks the illusion, then others follow like ants in a haystack. Run up to a person who's getting beaten up and others will be more prone to help out. Help the old lady across the street and the likeliness of someone doing the same next time will increase. Clean your nearby park from trash and make passers-by notice what you're doing; next time someone else might have cleaned it up.

Crowd cowardice follows the basic paradigm of all crowd psychology: follow the herd. When the crowd has got no leader and no civil courage, it becomes a disorganized mess of people either standing by and waching while their home burns to the ground, or going violently hysterical over whatever moral evil they perceive is a threat to them. You break through this crowd denial by always acting. Don't get swallowed up by cowardice; rise above your crowd inclinations and be the one who puts out the fire first.