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.
