Psychic Numbing and Mass Atrocity

Psychic Numbing and Mass Atrocity

Description

The twentieth century is often said to have been the bloodiest century in recorded history. In addition to its wars, it witnessed many grave and widespread human rights abuses. But what stands out in historical accounts of those abuses, perhaps even more than the cruelty of their perpetration, is the inaction of bystanders. Why do people and their governments repeatedly fail to react to genocide and other mass-scale human rights violations? There is no simple answer to this question. It is not because people are insensitive to the suffering of their fellow human beings—witness the extraordinary efforts an individual will expend to rescue a person in distress. It is not because people only care about identifiable victims of similar skin color who live nearby: witness the outpouring of aid from the north to the victims of the December 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. Nor can the blame be apportioned entirely to political leaders. Although President George W. Bush was unresponsive to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur, it was his predecessor, President Bill Clinton, who ignored the genocide in Rwanda, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt who for too long did little to stop the Holocaust. The American example of inaction has been largely repeated in other countries as well. Behind every leader who ignored mass murder were millions of citizens whose indifference allowed the inaction to pass. Every episode of mass murder is distinct and raises unique social, economic, military, and political obstacles to intervention. We therefore recognize that geopolitics, domestic politics, or failures of individual leadership have been important factors in particular episodes. But the repetitiveness of such atrocities, which have been ignored by powerful people and nations and by the general public, calls for explanations that may reflect some fundamental deficiency in our humanity—a deficiency not in our intentions, but in our very hardware, and a deficiency that once identified might possibly be overcome. One fundamental mechanism that may play a role in many, if not all, episodes of mass-abuse neglect involves the capacity to experience affect, the positive and negative feelings that combine with reasoned analysis to guide our judgments, decisions, and actions. Research shows that the statistics of mass rights violations or genocide, no matter how large the numbers, fail to convey the true meaning of such atrocities. The numbers fail to spark emotion or feeling and thus fail to motivate action. The genocide in Darfur is real, but we do not “feel” that reality. We examine below ways that we might make genocide “feel real” and motivate appropriate interventions. Ultimately, however, we conclude that we cannot only depend on our intuitive feelings about these atrocities. In addition, we must create and commit ourselves to institutional, legal, and political responses based upon reasoned analysis of our moral obligations to stop large-scale human rights violations.

Source Publication

The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy

Source Editors/Authors

Eldar Shafir

Publication Date

2013

Psychic Numbing and Mass Atrocity

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