The globalization of indifference

Today no one in our world feels responsible; we have lost a sense of responsibility for fellow human beings, we have fallen into the Hippocratic attitude. Even if we see a half dead on the side of the road, perhaps we say to ourselves “poor soul”, and then go on our way. it’s not our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured. Reminds me of the famous line in ‘Hotel Rwanda’ when UN Peacekeeping Forces leader Colonel Oliver says, regretfully, that they can’t intervene in preventing genocide, and that people back home would see it on television and say ‘that’s too bad’ and go back to eating their dinners

The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which is however lovely, are insubstantial. They offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others, it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it is none of my business. The globalization of indifference makes us all ‘unnamed’, responsible yet nameless and faceless.

          We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion, suffering with others, the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep.

Several months ago, a three-year-old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach. Photos of his lifeless body were shared rapidly around the world, producing a surge in attention to, and concern about, the refugee crisis formed by the Syrian Civil War. And there, seven months later, the European Union has launched a controversial program to detain migrants arriving in Greece and deport those who don’t qualify for asylum back to Turkey and their countries of origin. Donald Trump, who is campaigning in part on a promise to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.

Clearly, indifference is not something new; every period of history has known people who close their hearts to the needs of others, who close their eyes to what is happening around them, who turn aside to avoid encountering other people’s problems. But in our day, indifference has ceased to be a purely personal matter and has taken on broader dimensions.

There’s no lack of information in today’s world about distant hardships. globalization, contributed to the widespread outcry over Alan Kurdi’s photo. But as the fading of attention to the refugee crisis since then demonstrates, this kind of knowledge doesn’t always translate into compassion. indeed, it may compound lethargy, hardening public opinion and paralyzing world leaders.

Since the end of World War II and the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights we have tried to globalize concern. We had international campaigns to reduce extreme poverty and new institutions like the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals accused of committing atrocities. In the past, there weren’t global issues because there wasn’t very much that you could do about people on the other side of the world. The communications were too slow earlier. And now we have a completely different world in which communication is instant. We’re all connected in a way that I think promotes greater concern for the rest of the world. What matters is whether it’s in your power to prevent something bad from happening without excessive sacrifice on your part, no matter how far away the bad thing is occurring

If you walk by a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, should you save the child? You should try, even if that means muddying your clothes, and even if other people are callously walking right past the child, and even if that child is drowning thousands of miles away but you can place a call to someone who can help him or her. Be it your neighbor’s drowning child or a Bengali refugee, morally what is relevant is how certain are you that you will be able to help.