Moral Blindness (ePub)

Evil is not confined to war or to circumstances in which people
are acting under extreme duress. Today it more frequently reveals
itself in the everyday insensitivity to the suffering of others, in
the inability or refusal to understand them and in the casual
turning away of one's ethical gaze. Evil and moral blindness
lurk in what we take as normality and in the triviality and
banality of everyday life, and not just in the abnormal and
exceptional cases.

The distinctive kind of moral blindness that characterizes our
societies is brilliantly analysed by Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas
Donskis through the concept of adiaphora: the placing of certain
acts or categories of human beings outside of the universe of moral
obligations and evaluations. Adiaphora implies an attitude of
indifference to what is happening in the world - a moral
numbness. In a life where rhythms are dictated by ratings
wars and box-office returns, where people are preoccupied with the
latest gadgets and forms of gossip, in our 'hurried
life' where attention rarely has time to settle on any issue
of importance, we are at serious risk of losing our sensitivity to
the plight of the other. Only celebrities or media stars can expect
to be noticed in a society stuffed with sensational, valueless
information.
This probing inquiry into the fate of our moral sensibilities will
be of great interest to anyone concerned with the most profound
changes that are silently shaping the lives of everyone in our
contemporary liquid-modern world.