"The Perils of Indifference"

Every day, 30,000 children under the age of five die because of poverty. (UNICEF) Nearly one billion people came into the 21st century being illiterate.(UNICEF) One quarter of humanity, that's 1.6 billion people, live without any form of electricity.(Global Issues). 9,000 species of plants and animals become extinct every year, slowly depleting out biodiversity. (Rainforest Action Network) Do you care?

For many people the answer is quite simple; no. They don't care about the suffering of those around them. They effortlessly overlook the atrocities that occur in the world, and easily push aside the civil rights abuse of others. Truly significant aspects of our world are pushed aside and swept under the rug, to make way for priorities such as catching the latest American Idol and counting calories. Many people are slipping into a realm of indifference.

Elie Wiesel, a renowned Holocaust survivor, described this crisis as "The Perils of Indifference." Indifference has lead to a society with indistinguishable characteristics. Elie described indifference as "A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil." This loss of emotion is perhaps one of the greatest threats to our civilized existence.

Many would argue that evil is the most perilous threat we must cope with. Elie Wiesel, and myself, would sternly disagree. Evil, just as good does, must have burning passion. Evil requires emotion, thought and perspective. But indifference? Indifference is the absence of any passion. Indifference requires no thought, no emotion and no perspective. By being in different, we take away our own humility until we have become something inhuman and void of feeling. A world full of indifference would be far worse than anything evil could begin to produce.

The consequences of indifference can be seen throughout our past and present. When tails of the atrocities escaped from Nazi Germany, American and European corporations continued to conduct business practices with the German military up until 1942. When concentration camps were victimizing innocent people, wealthy nations turned away refugee immigrants. Now, after the fifty million deaths of World War Two, we see the consequences of our indifference. Even now, we repeat the same errors. The United Nations refuses to acknowledge the slaughter in Darfur as a genocide. We thoughtlessly pollute our environment and allow poverty to spread. Only time will be able to tell just how great the consequences of those indifferences will be.

As grim as the past of indifference may be, the future always holds hope. As an individual, you make the choice to be indifferent, or to be fervid about the issues and conflicts in the world around you. Inevitably, we will be dealing with the consequences of indifference for quite some time, but with a new outlook on our society, we can prevent new indifference from arising.