Human Blindness Unmoved by the Pain of Others

Human Blindness Unmoved by the Pain of Others

We have thus become perfect blind. Certainly we live in a time of crisis, a time where the more irrational animal instinct of survival partakes in the society in all those spaces of social, economic or political power. We have this awful ability of the human being to behave as a stone or a stick, as anything that neither feels nor suffers from. And. be indifferent about what is happening around us.

And this is, today's society is dead in the form of social reaction. A world that has numbed their contradictions to the timely coup of solidarity. Where it is only used at the time of the disaster or to fill first columns in newspapers, news broadcasts. Also creating campaigns that are supposed to help people but only electronically.

Indifference is permanent and makes just timely news like according with an article in Think progress by Brown that talks about “the kidnapping and subsequent sexual slavery for girls in Nigeria by terrorists of Boko Haram (2014)” to no longer be a topic of conversation, that the war of Ukraine and Syria is not in the headlines of the media. And all this, even if those who live this reality in the cities and towns of those countries are permanent with the dance of foul smells of burned flesh and blood of a rotten conflict already forgotten by those who prefer tune to another station of momentary tragedy able to sensitize our already insensitive shell. Even when the fatalities do not end when the news are spread over the world. Help is received for two weeks as if it were a type of fee or fine that it is a matter of time to be forgotten. While people lose everything that with effort they built in life, and today is only ash and debris. Not to mention the human loss that nor with all the gold in the world will return their parents to an orphan because of war or her child to a mother who died of hunger.

Now days it is also not common to see images of yellow robes similar to hazmat suits by medical personnel against Ebola in newspapers websites or televisions from first world countries. Even when “ a total of 132 new confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) were reported in the week to 1 March, an increase on the previous week (99 new cases) and when the figures of deaths from the disease already exceed the eight thousand people” according to figures provided just days ago by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2015). Finally adding all of these at the end of the day, the dead are less dead according to the nationality of their origin in this modern society of this twenty-first century. And in the face of this, compared to a reality that does not understand macroeconomic figures and that extends the exclusion and inequality day after day, we can only move from the indignation of the tweet or a post in Facebook thinking that this actions are helping those people that are starving and suffering the ravages of war and disease. Being blind for a bandage of indifference that we ourselves have created.

In fact almost every person act as they only care that they are not in dangerous, that the problem is not going to affect their country or environment and for them that is all that matters. There have always been selfish, unhealthy egocentric and hard and cowardly hearts, but the worst of the human being is not in the environment of violence, war or despair, where the fear paralyzes; the worst emerges when in the comfort of a lazy day, the tragedy is looming and the tragedy is ignored. When someone decides that no deaths are going to ruin their day. It makes me feel so disappointed when a saw posts or comments in social media of people saying that they do not care about what is happening in other countries or even other states while it do not start to affect their daily life’s. Today we see how children and young people are watching videos or harrowing images in the social media or video games. But unfortunately they only see the morbid or saw them with displeasure without feeling the least solidarity that is a human being, equal to them with the same rights and fears. This is what we want to our future society feel about others? In this manner future leaders will resolve hunger and war?

Indifference is a human behavior where you do not distinguish between justice and cruelty, punishment and compassion, between good and bad (Wiesel, 1999). It is like seeing another human being suffering the atrocities of war and disease and not feel nothing. Some people will say that it is ok to be indifferent to maintain sanity and have a normal life. Result much better just look apart. Excusing their acts saying that is strange and hard to be implicated in others pain and desperation and that they already have so many problems to resolve. While in the world that is around us is suffering horrible experiences. In one of the best speeches in the history Wiesel (1999) talks about one of the most dangerous states of humans, the indifference as he says that “Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he

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