Imagine a sea filled with dead people, the water stained burgundy, starved, naked bodies sinking and floating, 7 million dead bodies. Seven million died in the holocaust before the U.S. got involved. The U.S. displayed a great deal of indifference, and if the world didn’t have it, disasters like the holocaust could’ve been stopped early on. There are many causes of indifference including unknowing and inability to understand, ignorance and laziness, and financial problems, fear and priorities.
The first cause of indifference is unknowing and unable to understand the situation. Obviously, if someone doesn’t know about a genocide or other disaster, they can’t stop it. They may not know the seriousness of the situation either. Or, they are incapable to understand the seriousness, like in the source “Numbed by Numbers” by Paul Slovic, people can’t wrap their heads around the overly large numbers and therefore can’t understand what’s happening. Sometimes people do know but still don’t get involved.
Indifference can also be caused by laziness and ignorance. Ignorant people may think “Oh it’s not affecting me so it’s not my problem.” Some people simply don’t want to make a difference. Some ignorant people find the situation amusing. I once noticed a fight between two girls in the hallways of my school; people gathered in a circle and watched. I would have to say that I was one of those ignorant kids watching too. These ignorant people who don’t help others often don’t know that should. This could very well happen if a child grew up with genocide happening around them and no one told them it was wrong. Though some people don’t want to help because they’re too lazy or ignorant, some people may want to but are forced to be indifferent.
Sometimes people want to help but literally can’t. Some people may not have enough money or resources to help, and their main priority is to keep themselves alive first. Say a poor family in Chile has only enough money to keep their children from starving, they aren’t going to donate their small sum of money to stop a genocide far from home. Some governments have more urgent priorities like getting their country back on their feet after a civil war or stopping riots and violence. Several governments may fear that if they get involved that harm may come to their country, like being forced into a war.
People should care about indifference because if a genocide should happen in your country, there would be no one to help you. Indifference is happing all over the world continually and genocides will continue to happen until indifference ends. If everyone on earth was indifferent, there would be no good deeds or other things like reporting crimes, hence having a violent and uncompassionate community. This indifference is caused by fear, ignorance, unknowing and other priorities, but imagine a world without indifference, it would be peaceful, calm and loving. Isn’t that a world you wished you lived in?