In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie slowly becomes more and more desensitized to violence the longer he is in the camp. He goes from being an extremely religious Jewish boy in the small Romanian town of Sighet to a cold, survivor of Auschwitz, all in the span of a few months. When he first came to the camp, he was horrified to see guards beating prisoners and the burning smell of corpses. Later on when he saw the same thing, he thought in his mind that the prisoner was a fool for provoking a guard. To counter this process, some prisoners share small acts of kindness, such as the leader of their barrack who does everything he can to help everyone. In much the same light, the book I am personally reading, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge has many of the same ideas. The protagonist, a US marine named Sledge (often called "Sledgehammer" by his comrades) must grow up quickly past his initial perceptions of combat and the war based solely on rumor and propaganda and adapt to the realization of friends dying, a brutal enemy, and hellish environments. One of the small acts of kindness in the book that I found to be very kind was when a US Navy Corpsman saved Sledge from becoming completely brutalized from the war and absolutely desensitized. At the time, around him were marines looting gold teeth from Japanese war dead and as Sledge was about to attempt this for the first time, the corpsman told him that he would get bad diseases from doing so. It wasn't until years later that Sledge realized that the corpsman was trying to save his humanity rather than actually save him from any diseases. Humanity is another aspect of the book Night that my class discussed. We asked "What is humanity?" and "Can it be lost?". Many people seemed to conclude that yes, humanity can be lost, and in fact it can be lost quite easily if one lets oneself succumb to a bad situation. As happened to the marines in the Pacific, and the prisoners of Auschwitz, if one loses one’s moral compass and ideals, one can be compelled to do just about anything.
While these are two extreme examples of desensitization, it still could be an issue today. One of the key issues that Elie Wiesel talks about in modern interviews is people's ignorance to important issues around the world. Could this also be caused by a desensitization to violence? While I doubt that many could withstand seeing intense violence and not be affected, is desensitization affecting people at least to a subtle degree? Are we so used to living in a dangerous world filled with crime and disorder that we lost the will to attempt to fix some of the key issues affecting us today? Perhaps, but it will take quite a bit to get people to actually pay attention to the world and take initiative. It is up to our current and future leaders to lead said causes.
While these are two extreme examples of desensitization, it still could be an issue today. One of the key issues that Elie Wiesel talks about in modern interviews is people's ignorance to important issues around the world. Could this also be caused by a desensitization to violence? While I doubt that many could withstand seeing intense violence and not be affected, is desensitization affecting people at least to a subtle degree? Are we so used to living in a dangerous world filled with crime and disorder that we lost the will to attempt to fix some of the key issues affecting us today? Perhaps, but it will take quite a bit to get people to actually pay attention to the world and take initiative. It is up to our current and future leaders to lead said causes.