Distance between act and consequence erases the act’s moral significance entirely

Evidence

The increase in the physical and/or psychic distance between the act and its consequences achieves more than the suspension of moral inhibition; it quashes the moral significance of the act and thereby pre-empts all conflict between personal standard of moral decency and immorality of the social consequences of the act. With most of the socially significant actions mediated by a long chain of complex causal and functional dependencies, moral dilemmas recede from sight, while the occasions for more scrutiny and conscious moral choice become increasingly rare. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 102

Categorization

• XREF: This is Bauman’s key mechanism for how bureaucratic mediation erodes conscience — the precise scaffolding later Islamophobia readings build upon. — connects to: Gradually escalated demands erase the moral threshold of an action — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 450; Moral responsibility to others shrinks and vanishes with increasing distance — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 547; Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 546 (+3 more)

Related

• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity (similarity 0.87)
• Moral responsibility to others shrinks and vanishes with increasing distance (similarity 0.83)
• Bureaucratic distance makes actors’ moral standards irrelevant to operation success (similarity 0.83)
• Proximity grounds moral responsibility while abstract categories remain morally neutral. (similarity 0.81)
• Morality dies when social distance replaces proximity, enabling mass murder (similarity 0.80)
• Means-ends reasoning excludes moral categories by structuring action technically rather than ethically. (similarity 0.80)
• Obscuring the causal link between action and suffering sharply raises obedience (similarity 0.80)
• Long intermediary chains let people commit abhorrent acts without role awareness (similarity 0.79)
• Rationality of the actor and of the action can diverge, making reason self-destructive. (similarity 0.79)
• Mass murder required neutralizing proximity-based moral drives. (similarity 0.79)
• Gradually escalated demands erase the moral threshold of an action (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 546
• Moral responsibility to others shrinks and vanishes with increasing distance #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 547
• Proximity grounds moral responsibility while abstract categories remain morally neutral. #expands (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 526
• Gradually escalated demands erase the moral threshold of an action #expands (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 450
• Bureaucratic distance makes actors’ moral standards irrelevant to operation success #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 295
• Means-ends reasoning excludes moral categories by structuring action technically rather than ethically. #corroborates (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 502