Psychic numbing and genocide - "If I look at the mass I will never act"

[C C]

http://journal.sjdm.org/7303a/jdm7303a.htm

EXCERPT: [...] we are incapable of feeling the humanity behind the number 1,198,500,000. The circuitry in our brain is not up to this task. This same incapacity is echoed by Nobel prize winning biochemist Albert Szent Gyorgi as he struggles to comprehend the possible consequences of nuclear war: "I am deeply moved if I see one man suffering and would risk my life for him. Then I talk impersonally about the possible pulverization of our big cities, with a hundred million dead. I am unable to multiply one man's suffering by a hundred million."

ABSTRACT: Most people are caring and will exert great effort to rescue individual victims whose needy plight comes to their attention. These same good people, however, often become numbly indifferent to the plight of individuals who are "one of many" in a much greater problem. Why does this occur? The answer to this question will help us answer a related question that is the topic of this paper: Why, over the past century, have good people repeatedly ignored mass murder and genocide?

Every episode of mass murder is unique and raises unique obstacles to intervention. But the repetitiveness of such atrocities, 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 that, once identified, might possibly be overcome. One fundamental mechanism that may play a role in many, if not all, episodes of mass-murder neglect involves the capacity to experience affect, the positive and negative feelings that combine with reasoned analysis to guide our judgments, decisions, and actions. I shall draw from psychological research to show how the statistics of mass murder or genocide, no matter how large the numbers, fail to convey the true meaning of such atrocities.

The reported numbers of deaths represent dry statistics, "human beings with the tears dried off," that fail to spark emotion or feeling and thus fail to motivate action. Recognizing that we cannot rely only upon our moral feelings to motivate proper action against genocide, we must look to moral argument and international law. The 1948 Genocide Convention was supposed to meet this need, but it has not been effective. It is time to examine this failure in light of the psychological deficiencies described here and design legal and institutional mechanisms that will enforce proper response to genocide and other forms of mass murder....

[Magical Realist]

“The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic. ”
― Marilyn Manson

[Zinjanthropos]

I can't do anything for the dead.

I shall draw from psychological research to show how the statistics of mass murder or genocide, no matter how large the numbers, fail to convey the true meaning of such atrocities.

It is time to examine this failure in light of the psychological deficiencies described here and design legal and institutional mechanisms that will enforce proper response to genocide and other forms of mass murder....

What are the true meanings of these atrocities?

The last line is actually telling me to expect more failures, but at least we can respond properly? I don't get it.

[Syne]

It is time to examine this failure in light of the psychological deficiencies described here and design legal and institutional mechanisms that will enforce proper response to genocide and other forms of mass murder....

How exactly do you "enforce proper response"? At the point of a gun? By threat of violence or loss of freedom?

“The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic. ”
― Marilyn Manson

That was actually Joseph Stalin.

[C C]

I can't do anything for the dead. What are the true meanings of these atrocities?

Since the dead would not be in a "needy plight", the common reference to them in this statistical trope would apparently serve the purpose of indicating a crisis for large numbers of people still alive that would be facing a similar fate. Thus the concern over sufficient aid, rescue, world attention, and public displays of emotional hand-wringing.

"We don't need a media disaster today, candidate Smith. So just remember that Aleppo isn't an obscure acronym like that libertarian guy thought. Supply an ample amount of woeful and sympathetic facial expressions to the camera during your interview to compensate for and obscure the impotency of our proposed foreign and international policies."

The last line is actually telling me to expect more failures, but at least we can respond properly? I don't get it.

Perhaps a kind of immoveable object which thereby provides job security for psycho-social engineers. In actuality it is financially, physically, and mentally impossible (or at least impractical) for the average person to donate 100,000 times the money, effort and feelings to 100,000 people that might die. As such a lone individual may do to one or a handful of suffering individuals in a lesser situation.

Even those devoting their whole lives to missionary work, and any wealthy / guilty student progs with the classic "lots of free time", may lack that kind of upward ascension toward omnipresent availability, open-ended charity, and emotional multi-tasking. Endless psychological analysis isn't going to remedy those human, mortal limitations of the lone individual.

Why is the death of one million a statistic?: "[...] But why? In a world where people go around saying things like, "every life is precious" and "all people are equal," why do we react with such apparently unequal preciousness? If we take seriously the idea that every life is of equal value, we'd expect to feel twice the sympathy for two victims as for one; and we'd feel a hundred thousand times as much for a hundred thousand victims. And yet, we do the opposite."

Considering that the one million might be loosely distributed all over the place rather than aggregated into a particular, compact mass or faux empirical object... Then they may unavoidably be an abstract quantitative concept in that context.

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“The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic. ” ― Marilyn Manson

That was actually Joseph Stalin.

I wouldn't be surprised if even the common attribution to Stalin is ultimately unfounded. Much like all those feral quotes attracted to Einstein: "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."

[Syne]

“The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic. ” ― Marilyn Manson

That was actually Joseph Stalin.

I wouldn't be surprised if even the common attribution to Stalin is ultimately unfounded. Much like all those feral quotes attracted to Einstein: "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."

It was attributed to Stalin in 1947 by "The Washington Post". Either way, it clearly predates Manson, and if contemporary attribution is dismissed then so is much of history.

[Zinjanthropos]

Why is the death of one million a statistic?: "[...] If we take seriously the idea that every life is of equal value, we'd expect to feel twice the sympathy for two victims as for one; and we'd feel a hundred thousand times as much for a hundred thousand victims. And yet, we do the opposite."

Individually speaking......I would expect all of my sympathy for one, half of my sympathy for two, and so on. So when I get upwards to 1 million then each individual receives 1 millionth of my sympathy. As one can see, mathematically at least, this could work if trying to explain what is generally perceived to be a lack of sympathy on an individual's part. 

So does it mean we need a million sympatizers for a million victims? I think it means the perception is that there are one million people who don't give a ****.

So if only 1 millionth of my sympathy is directed towards an individual then I might be less inclined to act. Can I help each and every person that's part of a large group individually? No, and perhaps there lies the problem of inaction. Perhaps the mindset is whether one believes that making a difference for one person will see the problem go away. Do our sympathies favor individuals over groups?

[Magical Realist]

I wouldn't be surprised if even the common attribution to Stalin is ultimately unfounded. Much like all those feral quotes attracted to Einstein: "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."

"The short answer is: probably no he didn't say this quote. There is no citation supporting this claim.

Another unsourced variants:

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself.

But if you open page 418 of Einstein: His Life and Times (1972) by Ronald W. Clark, it says that Louis de Broglie did attribute a similar statement to Einstein:

To de Broglie, Einstein revealed an instinctive reason for his inability to accept the purely statistical interpretation of wave mechanics. It was a reason which linked him with Rutherford, who used to state that "it should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid." Einstein, having a final discussion with de Broglie on the platform of the Gare du Nord in Paris, whence they had traveled from Brussels to attend the Fresnel centenary celebrations, said "that all physical theories, their mathematical expressions apart ought to lend themselves to so simple a description 'that even a child could understand them.' "----http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questi...it-well-en

[Secular Sanity]

Idiot Compassion vs. The Rationalist Delusion

At one end of the spectrum, we have Paul Bloom, who makes a strong case against empathy, but at the other end, Jonathan Haidt makes a strong case against reason.

From your article:

Art is the antidote that can call us back from the edge of numbness, restoring the ability to feel for another.

I agree.  Art is an expression of our emotions.  Emotions aren’t valueless.  They’re not to be weeded out but cultivated.

"Art is "woman" without which it is impossible to live. In this supreme jeopardy of the will, art, the sorceress expert in healing, approaches us, only she can turn our fits of nausea into imaginations with which it is possible to live."—Nietzsche

Nietzsche got a bad rap as a misogynist. He uses "woman" as metaphors for the truth, art, wisdom, and life.

In "The Other Dancing Song," Zarathustra is gazing into Life’s eyes. He remembers the whip that the old woman told him to bring, if he is to engage her. It’s a dance, a battle of wills. Wisdom, i.e., the whip tries to bring order to life, but in trying to impose order on life you run the risks of losing touch with reality by replacing it with your own concoction. Life, therefore, is a little jealous of his wisdom, but nevertheless she appreciates his willingness to engage her. She admits that she would run away from him, if his wisdom departed. He whispers something in her ear, and of course, she has the last word, reminding him that any statement on the actual reflection of reality will always fall short. Next he says "But then life was dearer to me than all my wisdom ever was."

"You will dance and scream to the rhythm of my whip. I did not forget the whip, did I?"

I think our empathy and action is limited by our perceived effectiveness.

[C C]

Do our sympathies favor individuals over groups?

Perhaps the curse of our having approached this from some Hume-like "today I feel like I should / can; tomorrow I may not feel like I should / could". If there were global rules established, then it wouldn't matter if it the individual agent can emotionally and cognitively assimilate the magnitude of a large, needy group or not. It would act out of duty if that's what its moral prescriptions call for, according to whatever measure they call for in regard to the lone person contributing.

And thus any clamor for a national or international community to work that out, without worrying about our psychological abilities slash deficiencies in that regard.[*] Rather than leaving it hanging to the local arbitrary whims and mental states of the particular person. (If the matter is so important.)

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[*] A single cell of my body cannot "socially" cope with and even apprehend the vast organization of another human body. It's left to a summarizing of countless cells as a distinct body to deal with another summarizing of cells as a distinct body. At a higher level of integration where they can conceive the emergence of "one" from the "many" (in both their own case and the case of the other).

But an individual human does have the cognitive capacity to apprehend at higher levels in ways which the mindless, single cell cannot. So we can't quite get off the hook in similar manner.