[justjimmy]

Wow, this piece cuts close to home.

I currently live in Taiwan and just yesterday there was a subway stabbing - a 20s male started stabbing people on the subway. Naturally, reactions was slow as most people was playing their phones or getting some shut eye. He managed to kill 4 people, get off the subway and intimidate more people, before finally brought down by a 62 elder man.

Everyone can be armchair quarterbacks, shake their heads in disappointment, raise their fits in anger, but when you are in a situation such as the above, or witness a knife attack - you are stunned. Taipei is one of the safest city in Asia. Most of us don't see scenes such as this except on TV, and most of us don't know how to react. It's fight/intervene or flight/stay out of it.

I've taken defence classes, including Krav Maga and they all emphasize that knives are the most deadly weapon in the world due to its ease of access and the damage it can do.

Sorry it happened to the OP but I don't think society has 'become' anything. There's no proof that people are more willing to jump between a knife wielding maniac and a victim before the iPhone age.

[toyg]

I think the main difference is that the overall level of violence in society has gone down so much that people simply don't know how to react anymore. In the past, violence was much more present in everyday life: wars were more common, criminal activity was more common, law enforcement was lax or even non-existent, so people had to literally fight on the streets day by day just to survive. Women wouldn't go out alone even in daylight, most men were supposed to carry some sort of weapon as soon as they stepped out of walled towns (and often even while inside) and so on. After WWII, there were so many veterans around that you wouldn't dare starting sh*t for fear that somebody would kick your ass in 5 minutes.

Nowadays, people like me wouldn't know the first thing about hitting someone or defending themselves. My childhood home was in what we'd consider "a bad area" of a Southern European city (mafia and all that) but even there it took very little care to stay out of trouble. I don't think I've ever been in a physical confrontation with anyone after my 18th birthday; I wouldn't know how to use a knife or a gun, nor how to protect myself from it. Law enforcement and cultural pressure are now so efficient that they can usually limit violent activity to specific areas, so as long as I stay away from those, I'm very likely to be safe. (Every city has different attitudes and problems, of course, but that's more or less true for most of them)

If a random stranger started knifing people in my subway carriage, I'd probably freeze too - I'm a family man, not a goddamn soldier or street-fighter. Same for witnessing something like what OP describes.

[hipaulshi]

I am visiting Taiwan right now. What happened yesterday was very terrifying. And it sounds even worse from someone who has experienced it. I do prefer Taipei much more than Bay Area or China. I believe here, people have learned deeply the virtue of helping and caring for others in the society and support for each other. I would love to work and live here in the future.