In The duty of November 10, Maria Dakli raises a fundamental ethical question which she calls “Western apathy in the face of the other” or the lack of awareness of belonging to the “same international community”, which which corresponds, she writes, to “a selective vegetative coma. In other words, it highlights the fact that we live in carelessness or indolence in the face of the disasters of the world, whether wars, the climate emergency or the misery of peoples. .
If we think and act in this way without feeling responsible or connected to others (what the philosopher and ethicist Edgar Morin calls “connection”), who are an integral part of humanity just like us, we develop a disposition to easily tolerate destruction and violation of the other, especially if it is presented to us as a threat or an attack on our beliefs.
In his treatise on ethics (Method 6: Ethics published in Le Seuil), Edgar Morin recalls that the meaning of “ethics for others therefore asks us first of all not to reject others from humanity”. Not to cut off anyone from humanity is a primary ethical principle, he continues. “This principle asks us not only not to treat the other as an object, not to manipulate him as an instrument, but also not to despise him or degrade him as subhuman. »
In the face of armed conflicts, current collective thinking goes completely in the opposite direction. Instead of seeking peace with the other, we persist in promoting its elimination and the destruction of its environment without asking ourselves what part of our responsibilities are in this or that conflict.
Thus, currently, by contrasting massive popular support for NATO’s positions in Ukraine with indolence in the face of other armed conflicts, in particular Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, it is clear that public opinion public, as Mme Dakli, is malleable according to the interests of the dominant Western countries which define themselves as defenders of democracy and freedom in the eyes of the world. Between the lines, it must be understood that the demands of economic dominance and growth take precedence over all other considerations.
Since the dawn of time, the political elites have known that it is enough to wave the flag of fear and that of the threat of the other or that of losing even a tiny percentage of our material facilities to arouse unconditional adherence to the need to wage war with irresponsibility and general recklessness.
This guideline explains that, in the ongoing conflicts on the planet, Canada never stands up to say: enough is enough, we take the responsibility to contribute to building peace, to promote mediations and negotiations, to cease the sale of arms to war-making countries (think of the scandal of the sale of Canadian “Jeeps” to Saudi Arabia, the country that is leading the war in Yemen).
On the contrary, the warrior spirit is constantly appealed to to promote the necessity of war. The champions of resignation to the dictates of our interests proclaim loud and clear that there is no other option than “forced” war. In the face of disasters, propaganda works people’s minds in order to arouse unconditional adherence to the ugliness and the spirit of destruction of war rather than to respect for other peoples and for nature in all its aspects.
In short, as Edgar Morin reminds us: “Our civilization separates rather than connects. We lack “reliance”, and this has become a vital need: it is not only complementary to individualism, it is also a response to the concerns, uncertainties and anxieties of individual life. […] “Reliance” is a primordial ethical imperative, which governs the other imperatives with regard to others, to the community, to society, to humanity. This imperative is called responsibility with regard to the world of the other, which is also our world.