Moral suspension, not mobilization, enables ordinary people’s participation

Evidence

The invisible presence of the homo sacer as the potential of the modern state – the potential which can be made into reality once ‘the conditions are right’ – brings into relief once more the most terrifying, and still most topical, aspect of the ‘Holocaust experience’: that in our modern society people who are neither morally corrupt nor prejudiced may also still partake with vigour and dedication in the destruction of targeted categories of human beings; and that their participation, far from calling for the mobilization of their moral or any other convictions, demands on the contrary their suspension, obliteration and irrelevance. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 707

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanism directly transferable to how bureaucratic anti-Muslim measures can proceed without mobilizing hatred among ordinary administrators. — connects to: An individual’s exclusion from society enables their social participation — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 178; Ordinary people can commit extreme brutality under the right circumstances — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 1; Social organization neutralizes morality by making action adiaphoric, neither good nor evil — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 613 (+2 more)

Related

• Authorization, routinization, and dehumanization erode moral inhibitions against violence (similarity 0.83)
• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity (similarity 0.81)
• Long intermediary chains let people commit abhorrent acts without role awareness (similarity 0.80)
• Genocide’s moral invisibility recruits far more participants than conscience-stifling does (similarity 0.79)
• Social organization neutralizes morality by making action adiaphoric, neither good nor evil (similarity 0.79)
• Holocaust perpetrators were ordinary citizens acting without personal anti-Jewish resentment. (similarity 0.79)
• Individual moral judgment can remain intact without any supporting social rules (similarity 0.78)
• Organizations suppress morality because it cannot be rationalized (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• An individual’s exclusion from society enables their social participation #expands (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 178
• Social organization neutralizes morality by making action adiaphoric, neither good nor evil #expands (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 613
• Ordinary people can commit extreme brutality under the right circumstances #complicates (0.75) — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 1
• Moral responsibility to others shrinks and vanishes with increasing distance #qualifies (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 547