In the 13th century during the inquisition it was allowed to flourish due to apathy and fear that they would be the next ones to come under the hand of the catholic church. In France and Spain the inquisition destroyed almost all opposition to the catholic church through claims of heresy. Very few if any people fought the power of the inquisition and the pope and in doing so allowed for the deaths of countless people.
Presently, the disease of apathy still exists. America's Declaration of Independence says "thus the cardinal moral truths are these: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Today, 200 some years later the Declaration of Independence is still one of hypocrisy. All men in this country today are not equal. Women still do not have full economic rights as men getting paid less for the same job. Furthermore the USA and other countries around the world continually deny gays and lesbians the same rights as those of heterosexual people. For example, say one of your loved ones was in a horrible accident and had to go to the intensive care ward a heterosexual couple would have no problem seeing as how they would have a legally recognized marriage. Now take a gay couple for example there marriage is not legally recognized or valid and the surviving partner would not be allowed to see them until they were moved to a different ward.
Not only that but racial prejudices still exist today. In many parts of the south the judicial system is still racially motivated in crime. African-Americans are usually unfairly subjected to punishment that a white man would not be.
I have documented only a couple cases of apathy throughout history and today. There are millions of ways people are apathetic. Democracy's are a huge problem as they foster even more apathy. Apathy or inaction when action should be done is the largest problem facing world politics today. It allows for massacres and holocausts and inquisitions. Furthermore, apathy can lead to the downfall of nations for when citizens no longer care a civilization will fail.
3 comments:
My English teacher used to have a poster in the room that said, "The only way for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing". It is absolutely true and I completely agree that apathy is a massive problem. If you do not care about a problem, nothing will be done about it and the problem will never be solved, only hidden.
Is this apathy or intolerance? Your post and James post seem awfully similar, but one uses "apathy" and one uses "intolerance". Do you think there's a way the two are linked? Perhaps a word that better encompasses both ideas. Perhaps the Spanish were apathetic during the Inquisition, but they could have just as easily been intolerant, seen the people being murdered as different than themselves and willing to let those people be removed. A similar argument is often used to explain apathy in the Holocaust, which of course goes back to my original question for you. Are apathy and intolerance connected, and if so how?
Sam seems to be describing the apathy of people who are too lazy to actually stand up to the intolerance of others.
Pope Benedict might not have been an anti-semite and might not have agreed with the Nazi Party, but by not standing up to the Reich, and by accepting the position of Hitler Youth, he was endorsing the party and agenda of Hitler.
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