Would You Risk It?

I was sitting in a park of recent when I got into a conversation with someone sitting next to me. At some point I decided to ask him something that ive thought of previously but didn’t have anyone to discuss with. I asked him what he would do if he saw a maniac wielding a knife, threatening another person. Without taking much time to think about it, he said he would run away and his reason was simple, he just had too much to live for and wasn't going to risk his life over someone else's problem.
I found his response interesting, so I decided to push the question a little further. I asked him what if he were the person being threatened. Wouldn't he want someone to come to his aid? Wouldn't he hope that someone passing by would be courageous enough to intervene, call or at least do something to prevent him from being harmed? He paused for a moment before admitting that, of course he would want someone to help him.
That conversation got me thinking about courage and how we sometimes perceive it. It is easy to talk about being brave when we are not the ones facing danger and from a distance we admire people who put themselves in difficult situations to help others, celebrate those who stand up against injustice and ultimately condemn people who look away when someone is in trouble and dont get me wrong i am not one to judge heck even i dont know what i would do in that situation because for me there is a difference between being courageous and being reckless. I don't believe courage necessarily means running towards an armed person with a knife or putting yourself in unnecessary danger. To be honest realistically speaking the outcome determines if people will call you a hero or call you reckless or even foolish. If you succeed in protecting the person, you be called courageous and a hero but if you die or get seriously injured, youll be called foolish or reckless even.
I guess this is one of the contradictions of human nature. We want to live in a society where people look out for one another but we are not always willing to be the people who make that society possible. We want strangers to care about our safety but we sometimes struggle to show even the smallest concern for the safety of strangers.
I don't think we should expect everyone to become heroes or sacrifice their lives for strangers. That would be an unreasonable expectation but I do think we should be careful about becoming so preoccupied with our own comfort and safety that we lose the ability to care about what happens to other people. There is a middle ground between putting yourself in unnecessary danger and pretending that another person's suffering is none of your concern and this is what i find in todays world especially in todays Government even, people tend not to care about what is going on in the world because it really doesn’t affect them or they live in better countries or they are privileged enough to be able to shield themselves away from the problems of the world.