Why People Turn to Detachment

Why people turn to detachment

Apathy (also called impassivity or perfunctoriness) is a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation and passion. In modern life, apathy is becoming a social problem. There was the ‘Kitty Genovese’ event, a woman was murdered, many people watched it but nobody saved her. Coincidentally, there was a similar case in China, a little girl in Guangdong was hit by a car, laid on the road, 18 people passed her by and nobody saved her. Why was there such apathy, indifference and lack of concern displayed from modern people? A lack of mercy, increase in population, fear of stopping criminals, and unfair social systems are the reasons for people’s apathy, however, the main reason is still the lack of ethics education.

First at all, the enormous increase in population has affected people’s old ethical standards. Many people will agree that people living in big cities are much more indifferent than people living in small town. Also, modern people are colder than ancient people. There are two reasons why people have different affect when they live in different place. One is people’s morality changes a little bit when they live with unfamiliar people. In ancient times, people had a strong social circle, the ethics in their circle are simple and straightforward, and so every person had a strong sense of moral responsibility. For example, when people lived in a small social circle, it is very hard to withhold aid to an acquaintance. However, the huge population nowadays changed people’s life style, when people are trapped in a crowd made of strangers; some codes of ethics lose their function. With the development of modern communications tools, people have convenient ways to communicate. They can have larger and broader social networks, but every contact becomes more detached, more fragile. The influx of strangers has strained the local infrastructure and disrupted the sense of...