Last month, in the middle of the day on a busy street in the Italian town of Civitanova Marche, Alika Ogorchukwu, a Nigerian street vendor, was attacked and killed by a man using his bare hands. Although the police were called, and someone filmed the attack, no one intervened. Amid general outrage, an editorial in the Italian newspaper La Stampa took this as a sign that we are in “the twilight of civilization.” As psychology experiments have shown, an individual is less likely to come to the aid of another if they can see that other people who could help are not doing so.

Op-Ed: Don’t be a bystander. What you can do to help get aid to the millions at risk of famine
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About the author:
Peter Singer
Peter Singer is the author of The Life You Can Save and the founder of the organization to which the book gave rise, and which has the same name. He is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. In addition to The Life You Can Save his books include: Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, One World, and The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason). In 2013 he ranked 3rd on the Gottleib Duttweiler Institute's list of "Global Thought Leaders."