Choose to be a healer

'Dadu,' one of my Gen Z friends said, her voice cynical, 'our society is divided into three kinds of people: abusers, abused and onlookers.' We were discussing chilling reports of an assault inside a frat house at an Ivy League university in the US. Her simple, brutal taxonomy struck as profoundly true. It is a fact that most men think of themselves as possessing some kind of entitlement. Sigmund Freud called this the 'Id', or the unconscious source of bodily needs, impulses and desires, especially those related to aggression and the sexual drive. Shifting gear to ego, one acts according to the reality principle.

The reality is that abusers operate with a huge degree of impunity that the organs and institutions of society permit them. The onlookers are passively complicit. Intervening is fraught - so they are busy recording reels for social media. But wait, there is a fourth, and perhaps the most vital, group - healers. They are brave police officers who refuse to be a part of the flawed system, the tireless NGO workers who sit with survivors, and the advocates who fight for justice.

We are not born healers; we must choose to be. We must call out the entitlement in our midst, reject complicity of the onlooker, and actively work to restore what is broken. Let's be the fourth kind of people.