The Perils of Indifference

The perils of indifference simply means the dangers of not caring. Perils meaning something that may cause loss, or injury and indifference being lack of interest. The speech "The Perils of Indifference" explores exactly this in a historic example. There are many examples of this throughout history, of man kind ignoring issues and letting them escalate until eventually it gets so bad that someone has to step in.

When the world is faced with an sequence of disasters, the first one is usually the most publicized and responded to, while if there are disasters shorty after of similar or worst magnitude the world gets overwhelmed and choses to ignore them. A recent example of this is the earthquakes in Haiti and Chili. The Haitian earthquake was very widely publicized to attain global aid. While shorty after the Chilean earthquake being of similar eminence was practically ignored due to the Chilean economic state. Also recently there was mass flooding in India that has gotten very little media attention because the all the global aid is still going to Haiti. These are examples of dangers from ignoring things.

Elie Wiesel's speech "The Perils of Indifference" and the story, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, explore very similar themes, that dangers come from not caring. In the story "The Lottery", a very unusual event happens each year where a towns person is chosen and the villagers stone them to death. Most people would think this is wrong but when no one speaks up, people don't have a reason to stop. This connects to Elie's speech because she brought evidence forward that the United States government knew what was happening in the holocaust and chose to ignore it until other countries finally stepped in. Both these pieces share the importance of not ignoring important causes, and doing something about it.