A very sad thing happened a few days ago.

A senior citizen was boxed, kicked, and repeatedly assaulted by a shirtless young man who had boarded a jeepney. A video circulating on social media captured the entire incident. It was painful to watch.

The elderly man appeared to have fallen onto the floor of the jeepney, curled against the back of the driver's seat. In that helpless position, he continued to receive punches and kicks from his attacker.

Another elderly passenger, seated at the far end of the jeepney, repeatedly pleaded with the young man to stop. He also urged the driver to leave, but his appeals went unanswered.

The other passengers remained seated, frozen in fear. One woman was visibly trembling; the camera even showed her shaking legs. No one moved. No one intervened.

The attacker stepped off the jeepney, then climbed back in and assaulted the helpless man again. Only after this repeated cycle did the jeepney finally drive away.

I watched that video more than once. Not because I wanted to, but because it kept reappearing on my Facebook feed as more people shared it and commented on it. Yet every viewing left me with the same feeling of sadness.

It was not only one senior citizen who was being assaulted. In a way, all of us were. Not by the young man alone, but by the silence that surrounded him.

Violence is frightening. Most of us do not know how we would react until we find ourselves in such a terrifying situation. I do not judge the passengers who were visibly afraid. But I cannot help wondering whether something deeper is happening to us.

Have we become so afraid of getting involved that we no longer know how to help another human being in distress? Have we become so worried about possible consequences that we would rather remain silent than try to prevent further harm?

There is another question that has continued to trouble me. Someone was recording the entire incident.

I understand that videos can become valuable evidence. Many crimes today are solved because someone had the presence of mind to document what happened. But there is a difference between preserving evidence and simply becoming a spectator to violence.

If a person is in immediate danger, should our first instinct be to press the record button—or to find the safest possible way to help, alert the driver, call the police, or seek assistance from others?

A friend offered an explanation. He said people today fear the repercussions of getting involved, even when their intentions are good. They worry that they might become the next victim, be dragged into legal proceedings, or face retaliation.

I understand that fear. But what worries me even more is that we may be witnessing something deeper than fear. We may be witnessing the slow erosion of empathy.

Every day our phones deliver another fight, another accident, another shooting, another act of cruelty. We watch them while having breakfast, during lunch breaks, or before going to sleep. We react with an emoji, leave a comment, and scroll to the next post.

Little by little, repeated exposure risks turning suffering into just another piece of content. Without realizing it, we begin to watch other people's pain instead of feeling it.

Empathy does not require heroism. It does not always mean confronting a violent person. Sometimes it means calling for help, urging the driver to leave, alerting the authorities, or simply refusing to pretend that what is happening is someone else's problem.

Compassion often begins with the decision not to remain indifferent.

We Filipinos have always taken pride in our bayanihan spirit. We celebrate it after typhoons, earthquakes, fires, and floods, when strangers become neighbors and communities come together to help one another.

Should bayanihan wait for a natural disaster? Should it not also live inside a jeepney?

Bayanihan should also live in the instinct to protect an elderly man from further harm. It should live in the refusal to treat another person's suffering as entertainment.

If we allow empathy itself to erode, we lose something far more precious than our sense of community.

We lose part of what makes us human. (Email: [email protected])