- Cash's actions should've been governed by the determination between what's right and what's wrong. I guess if you're personally ok with watching something bad happen in front of your eyes and you don't feel the need to do what you can to stop it, then you have no obligations. But morally, and especially in Cash's case, if there is any possible chance that you can help prevent something absolutely horrible from happening, why wouldn't you? I think there are different "rules", per se, depending on the wrong. If you're seeing a homeless person steal a loaf of bread the only morally correct way to stop it would be to buy the bread for them, you know? But for Cash, he literally watched his best friend who he knows very well go into a woman's bathroom, grab a little child, and rape her. He left the bathroom not knowing what his friend would do and he went on with his night. How can someone be ok with that? At the very least he could've yelled at him to stop. If he's best friends with Strohmeyer he 100% could've yanked him away and grabbed the girl and brought her to safety. If it didn't work at least we know he tried. But he did NOTHING. Strohmeyer even told Cash afterwards that he murdered the little girl and left her corpse in the bathroom and Cash was able to go about the rest of the night and even drive home not only knowing that his friends killed her, but that he was there when she was still alive. He could've stopped her from dying. And it's astonishing that he literally said he's "not gonna lose sleep over it". As for the case in "The Nightmare on the 36 Bus", there was a group of people who watched a little boy get beaten by a grown man and no one did a single thing. As it said in the article, the passengers were "bent on protecting themselves over a boy who received no protection at all". Considering it was an entire group of people versus one man beating up a little child, they could've determined that no circumstance should stop them from trying to help this kid, not even a family issue like Auclair said. As a human being and as one of the people in the small group of bystanders on this bus, all of them were obligated to take action in some way to help this kid and they didn't. I can't even imagine that happening and everyone deciding it would be better to not do anything. The actions of the person who was recording the fire should be governed by the circumstances just like anything else. It was clear the fire had just started and regardless if the fire just starting or had been going for a while, you always think about who could be inside, especially when there's no emergency services there to check. The person can take pics/vids all they want but wouldn't you think instinctively a person would call 911 when they see a fire when there's no one there helping yet? It's an obligation just like anything else to make a decision on the spot to help the situation but I would't think calling 911 in this case would require a second thought. It seems I'm wrong.
- I think the rules that would govern someone to act on a crime or simply witness one such as Stromeyer's would be, as I said before, your own moral determination between right and wrong. Any one who's not a sociopath would know that you would never want to witness a little girl being sexually assaulted and killed, but it you're forcefully put in Cash's shoes you would have to do SOMETHING. You absolutely have an obligation to. Any kind of person in a similar situation to this one where you're alone with another person who you know very well who's hurting another person, you would always be obligated to try to stop it unless they had a gun or something, in which case you'd have to make the call as to what would be most effective and safe in fixing the situation. There was a lot of conversation about bystanders after George Floyd's death too. The woman who recorded it was screaming at the cop to stop, but a lot of people took notice that no one actually physically tried to stop him. If this police officer was already actively killing someone, what would happen if someone tried to grab the guy? It could've made the situation worse, or it could've stopped it, how could you know? This would be a situation where I think it would be occasionally, but also maybe not. In the case of the 36 bus, the rules of whether or not to act would be to consider the fact that it was late at night, this kid was young and obviously afraid of the intoxicated man he was with, and then was punched until he was gushing with blood. Sitting in silence and watching is the last thing that should've happened. As I said above, there was an entire group of able bodies adults that could've stopped this man and protected this young child who desperately needed help and got none. With the fire situation, as I said above, the person recording should've had the instinct to think about if there could be people in the house and if they know there's a fire and if emergency services are present, and then you can determine how to act, if anything. The circumstances here determined that this bystander should've been doing something to help but instead recorded a video so they'd have a story to tell. It's fascinating to me that at the scene there was a regular old citizen who felt so inclined to run into the house and scream to save the people who were inside, and there was also a person recording for selfish reasons and not caring about the fact that there's a fire with lives at risk, nor even thinking about that possibility. There are so many factors to determine whether or not we have an obligation to act. I think if you know that you're watching something horrible happen and you KNOW you're witnessing something bad happening, how could you walk away and not have it on your conscience. Again, it's hard for there to be one concrete answer.
This is just jumbled summaries of my opinions/thoughts on the questions and articles, sorry for the messiness.