I feel when Bucha happened in Ukraine still a lot of people were shocked and outraged. But somehow this extreame achievement of the human race to formulate human rights and at least try to defend them is withering away.
- Genocide in Gaza, meh.
- Genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh whatever.
- Genocide in some African country again? They always have some genocide going on there
- Genocide in Xinjang? Look they are dancing in the propaganda videos, how bad can it be?
- UK sending refugies from all over the world to Rwanda? They categorized it as a save country so what’s the Problem?
- Guantanamo is still open? We haven’t heard much about it for years, probably everything is ok there
I could go on and on. So is it just the times now that nobody wants WWIII so we are just looking the other way? Even worse, if you want to protest for human rights, you get into trouble, not just in dictatorship countries, but in Germany, US, etc.
If you develop an economy where everyone is struggling just the right amount in order to make a living, they’re too busy surviving to care/take action against atrocities. But don’t make them struggle too much, or else they’ll rise up against you. You need a careful balance.
It’s mental exhaustion. I wouldn’t take seeming uncaring about it, I know personally it’s just so much bad happening that if I forced myself to pay attention to it all I’d collapse in a pile of anxiety. I don’t like anything you posted, but I wouldn’t be able to carry on myself if I didn’t look the other way on some of it.
This is definitely the issue. For most of modern history, humans haven’t had to care about anything outside of their city/town/village from day to day. Then social media and 24/7 news came along and suddenly we know everything going on, and most of it is bad because that’s what drives viewership.
We shouldn’t expect every person to be worried about every issue all the time. It’s just not good for you.
I’m personally trying not to focus on things outside of my sphere of influence. I’ll vote in elections, donate if I can spare the money, volunteer if I can spare the time, and buy products I know are more ethical than alternatives. That’s realistically the most anyone should ask of one (frankly unremarkable) person.
Exactly, it’s naiive to think that because someone isn’t actively doing something means they don’t care. It’s great to remind them, even try to keep it in their heads, but never assume they just don’t care until they prove otherwise.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, I was having full-on panic attacks. I could barely sleep, I lost weight, it was bad. I got help, and I learned how I just can’t think about the entirety of the world. Exactly what you said - vote, call my senators/congressmen, but that once I’ve done what I can then I have to be content with that, that’s all I can do. What I’ve started doing is becoming more vocal and active in my local community on a few issues, and that has brought me a lot of peace and content, it’s something I can actively do to make people’s lives better.
Genocide in Gaza, meh
I agree with all the other examples you listed … but this one? “Meh”? Lemmy and really the general media won’t shut up about it.
If anything the question should be “Why don’t people care about human rights … unless it’s in Gaza?”
I don’t think it’s that nobody cares. It’s just outrage fatigue. There’s so many things, as you listed, that it’s just exhausting to be outraged about everything all the time.
Most of us are just trying to get by: pay rent, put food on the table, etc.
So it’s not that I don’t care about those, it’s just that I don’t have time or energy to (or at least not all of the things all the time).
Pretty much. Along with wage slavery, what’re we supposed to do? Students are the only ones with the time and resources on their hands to protest about it. They’re literally the moral barometer of our society.
Homelessness is up in my country, region, city, and community.
Full-time minimum wage can hardly cover a room, let alone a bachelor apartment where I live.
Food banks are experiencing shortages all year-round.
Unemployment is steady, but jobs are hard to come by for people new to the market. Students are having trouble finding seasonal jobs, too.
There’s enough going on locally that I can’t be outraged about every terrible thing happening around the world.
It is simple, you can’t care about everything. Pick your battles. The burden of the world is not fit for one person to carry. Besides, once you feel outraged, what happens ? Nothing. Then you get desensitized. It’s a survival mechanism to stay sane in a world where we have less and less power to handle more and more problems.
People get outraged and go out to protest. Why is this kind of defeatism bs upvoted? You live way to privileged to even think about being desensitized, while the people in some parts of the world even struggle to survive.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Genocide in Gaza, meh.
What? People are willing to let Trump win (which would be its own entirely separate set of human rights violations by itself) over the genocide in Gaza.
You must not be paying enough attention because your first point can be easily disproven by visiting any major news source and viewing the stories on the mass protests on college campuses all over the county right now.A lot of them were “disappointed” when the estimated death toll got reduced. That tells us who those people really are. Very likely, they’re Russia bots that are using the events in Gaza as a distraction to their war in Ukraine.
The world could care less if it is Trump or Biden. But your supposition that stopping one genocide supporter is rooting for another fascists is not the worlds fault, but your own. Democracy as you still would call it.
Stop trying to claim to be the police of the world, while at the same time also sell weapons to the half of the world including despotic regimes and genocidal ones. A very good business model, but the world is seeing through it.
We all know where your priorities lie, and it isn’t Human Rights.
You must not be paying enough attention because your first point can be easily disproven by visiting any major news source and viewing the stories about the mass protests on college campuses all over the county right now.
Yes, the protests got more news time than the actual ethnic cleansing. Tells a lot about the populace.
It’s fine that genocides are happening over other countries with your blessings, But hur dur… we… we don’t want what we do to other countries happening to us. 😭
It’s about time you face consequences of your actions.
Yes but that’s mostly because Israel is involved, which is a white colonialist state with whom the west are heavily involved economically. Especially the US.
The other countries OP mentioned get no attention however.
It’s because we now live in a “post normal” world. Having 5 minutes to just sit and think without being blasted with news about 15 new tragedies is now considered a luxury for the rich. When you’re bombarded 24 hours a day with terrible news of a never ending stream of ever more horrible atrocities they all just kind of blur together and turn into background noise.
So to answer your question, people DO still care about human rights, but actually doing anything about it has become a seemingly impossible task due to the sheer volume of awful things going on in the world right now.
Conservatives, emboldened by Obama’s presidency, have never cared.
Progressives have always cared.
I suppose you’re just looking the other way and refusing to see the good guys? Possibly because you’re one of the bad guys? Or maybe you live in a state that blasts Faux News everywhere.
Pictures, or lack thereof. In 2022, we were shown daily with the horrors perpetuated by the Russians. I suppose the corporate media were happy to do it because it was Russia doing it, and that means easy arms sales and no (sane) protests.
Now though, because of Israel’s genocide in Palestine, there isnt the bombardment of pictures and videos from Ukraine. It draws parallels to what Israel is doing in Gaza, and Netanyahu/Likud’s military is a multi-billion dollar “venture” by the US arms industry. One where Israel gets billions from the US gov and spends it on buying US weapons and ammo.
Edit: to be clear, showing the same videos now draws “unwelcome” comparisons to what Netanyahu and Likud are doing in Palestine. They don’t want a return to the anti-war movement that came out of media from.the Vietnam war.
I can’t remember the last time I spoke to anyone who wasn’t concerned with some kind of securing of human rights somewhere in the world. If anything, I’ve always seen some kind of disagreement over “what form” (because apparently “human” and “right” are not straightforward terms for some people, which is rather disheartening as someone who wants a reason to see humanity as intrinsically good). There are tragic world events I’m sure are themselves undeservedly lower on everyone’s “care about this” list because thoughts manifest according to atmosphere and not clockwork.
Norms are eroded when they are violated and there are no consequences.
‘Why should I pay attention to carpool lane signs if there is not penalty for violating them? I won’t.’ Lots of people think this way and now they are just another lane.
Violations of norms are also contagious. If one traffic law doesn’t matter, maybe we can get away with violating it more. ‘I did it before and didn’t get caught. Maybe I can keep doing it to save time’A lot of people are shocked and outraged about each. Look at the protests and encampments around universities. Similar to people having a finite amount they can donate, they have a finite amount of energy and focus to pay attention to and change.
One group making up bullshit reasons to kill another isn’t going to stop with Ukraine, Gaza, Xinjiang, etc. Even if there were major interventions and a global cooperative effort to ease those specific tensions.
My fight is focused on improving transit for everyone, keeping this planet from warming up too much, and keeping rich people from siphoning up every bit of liberty we have left.
I think people have a lot of good responses especially about outrage fatigue. Also as many pointed out, people do care, hence the protests especially about Gaza. But even if everybody agrees that the atrocities are terrible people disagree on the solution. Historically the United States has been very involved in foreign affairs and trying to be some sort of glorified superman that went around beating up corrupt governments and improving lives in oppressed countries but it went terribly. It turned out that the US occupying these nations and fighting them just upset the locals even more and led to extremists and even more bloody fighting. Now days I think a lot of people want to help but prefer the government stay out of it. I think what is happening in Ukraine and Gaza is terrible but I don’t want the US involved. Us sending soldiers and weapons doesn’t help. Instead, I give to charity, and do the little bit I can to help struggling people.
Good that you are raising the outrage fatigue. At the same time I’d like to highlight that you are asking your question in the Fediverse which is probably a Western dominant world and it also depends who you are talking to in real life. The west has seen the Covid-19 pandemic which was, I’m sure, a shocker to a lot of people (though not everyone will admit that), and I am sure that the huge popularity of smart phone scrolling has made people change their attitude more indifferent. There is surely more to this like the invasion in Ukraine and the resulting inflation, and more “flex” work in many countries. Have a look at this image, which also shows why people have less time to care about more than their own problems : https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/433/665/876/256/493/original/b858379a791385c9.jpg (Image posted in a post by a Unconditional Universal #BasicIncome (UBI) advocate) tl;dr Governments and companies and the super rich will keep people with lower income busy worrying about their own problems.
True, but students are vulnerable to being expelled from university for being involved in public protests. Public universities in my country do so in order to discourage students from protesting the government.
I’ve lost faith in the social power of public protests myself. I’ve basically stopped believing in democracy. Most protests these days are driven by politicians seeking to topple the government or other politicians.
