![]() Though these are two very distinct aspects of the definition of indifference, it is important to note that either of these elements could produce the same effect. Thus, in Robbins’s terms it would seem indifference is not a lack of compassion, but rather a lack of action. Though we may sympathize with the plight of others, our willingness to assist them will only be an outgrowth of more personal, tangible issues that we have committed ourselves to resolving. The problem, ultimately, as Robbins explains, is “that global commitments can emerge more or less organically and continuously only from local, personal, familial commitments” (91). While compassion or pity can be felt for people no matter their nationality and social status, the crux of the issue is a different “tyranny of the close over the distant” (86). One might experience a “moment of consciousness,” as Robbins describes it, in which one grasps the complexity of the division of labor and the inequality it engenders, but “this moment of consciousness will not be converted into action” (84). Compassion, Robbins claims, can be aroused regardless of differences between the victim and the onlooker it is simply the ability of compassion to affect action that is affected by the degree of closeness. If this sense is lacking, the result will be a relative lack of compassion, which is one important element of indifference.īruce Robbins, author of the essay “The Sweatshop Sublime,” would argue against Nussbaum’s point that a degree of closeness is required for any feeling of compassion to develop. ![]() Nussbaum is of the belief that, among other causal factors, a sense of connectivity and commonality is required between the victim and the onlooker for compassion to be aroused within the onlooker. Commenting on why Americans did not respond emotionally to the plight of Rwandans with the same intensity as they did following September 11th, she writes, “suffering Rwandans could not be seen as part of the larger ‘us’ for whose fate we trembled” (17). Nussbaum expresses, in part, the more modern view on the causes of indifference in her essay “Compassion and Terror.” Though she directly discusses the concept of compassion in the context of the events surrounding September 11th, her particular thoughts on the causes of this emotion are of equal relevance with regard to indifference. Analyzing the prevailing approaches to these questions, from the perspective of two significantly different generations, ought to give deeper insight into the concept of indifference, how it might explain the global response to the Holocaust, and, perhaps more importantly, how it relates to the world today. It seems worthwhile, however, to take heed of the words of wisdom that Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, might have to offer given his experience. Nussbaum and Bruce Robbins, in their respective essays “Compassion and Terror” and “The Sweatshop Sublime,” present the typical contemporary answers to these questions. Essentially, his question raises two separate but equally important issues: What motivates indifference, and what are its consequences? Martha C. In his speech “The Perils of Indifference,” Elie Wiesel addresses the question that underlies any discussion of the world’s response to the atrocities of the Holocaust: “What is indifference?” (2). What exactly was it, then, that took the world so long to respond? And if the international community was truly unaware of what was taking place (a theory which has long since been abandoned), why did the Europeans who were aware of but not subject to Nazi persecution sit back and watch? By the time the United States and its allies finally launched a full scale attack against the Fascist powers in 1944, most of the genocide that the Nazis ultimately committed had already taken place, and many of the death camps had long since closed down because there was simply no more killing to be done. Though historical analysis might reveal that the Second World War had its roots in what were the early stages of the Holocaust, that which made the war worthy of its worldly status did not truly begin until a number of years later. There exists a common misconception that the terms “World War II” and “The Holocaust” refer to the same period in history. “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
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