So a discussion popped up in class, as they occasionally do, and we talked about sidewalks, and the elements that make them safe and unsafe. This got me thinking and I remembered the bystander effect and then applied the paradox to sidewalks, addressing them as living entities.
But I digress, first, in order for sidewalks to be living entities in the hallows of our minds, we must comprehend how they function, how they survive. In short, they’re symbiotic with us. Like the the goby fish and shrimp, we depend on one another for mutual benefits. The sidewalk needs people to walk on it in order to stay healthy, to acquire that importance of a symbiosis, so that it may receive crucial repairs and even cosmetic additions. A used sidewalk is a happy sidewalk. In return, it offers us safety, improves housing values, and attracts the type of people it walks on sidewalks.
Conversely, if we were to neglect a particular sidewalk, it would starve. Wither and die, crack and peel, it would waist away in to nothingness. With a decayed area, no one would come to save it, but this hurts people as well, for order will be compromised and corruption will take place in this area without people, where the sidewalks have even died out. This quickly spreads, like a viral disease, in to neighboring areas and soon, the entire complex, both sidewalks and the humans, have decayed in to nomads’ lands.
So back to the bystander effect. We know that too much of anything is a bad thing. I’ve already gone over the negative effects of starving sidewalks form human contact, but there is an equally dire slope for the sidewalk and man to slip down. Too much walking, in too great of quantities, like medicine to your immune system, makes humans and sidewalks alike lazy. The walks stretch themselves in a gluttonous manner, adapting to their large diet and growing beyond what man can care for, so the walkways quickly become littered with garbage. And man, next to so many others, relies heavily upon them, and will get mugged and expect others to help, and others will expect others to help, and the mugger will get away easily.
The weakening or strengthening of society depends on the dosage in which we interact with our walks.
