Indifference: Roots And Wings’ Word Of 2022
I have chosen Indifference as my word of the year, because more than any other term it captures the zeitgeist prevailing in the western world.
I have chosen Indifference as my word of the year, because more than any other term it captures the zeitgeist prevailing in the western world.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel
Indifference dissolves moral boundaries. It distracts people from doing the right thing. In practice, indifference erodes the significance of the distinction between right and wrong and good and evil. Worse still, indifference renders many people so passive that they become unwitting accomplices to the loss of their way of life and even of their freedoms.
One reason why the crusade against long standing civilisational norms has been so successful is because a significant section of the Western public reacted to it with studied indifference. For example, people claim that discussions about gender pronouns’ or the cancelling of speakers, don’t really matter because they are side issues with no significant impact on life.
Establishment institutions have casually acquiesced to the ceaseless demand re-engineering the English language. Leading cultural and educational institutions have bought into the claim that it is no big deal to render our language language gender neutral. Their indifference to the contamination of our vocabulary by a corrosive ideology is often expressed thus: ‘it is only a word’.
In 2022, one of the most high-profile casualties of the institutionalisation of indifference was the historically and scientifically informed meaning of the word “woman”. As the months passed by it became evident that one institution after another was prepared to demonstrate trans-inclusion by replacing the word women with sexless terms. It was not so much the actions of trans genderist zealots but the studied indifference with which their claims were met that led to a situation where the very meaning of a woman has become a fierce topic of debate.
By the time Dictionary.com selected ‘woman’ as its word of the year for 2022 the disassociation of woman with female biological sex had gained significant cultural validation. That the meaning of a woman could no longer be taken for granted was affirmed by Dictionary.com. It reported that searches for the word woman on the Dictionary.com site doubled this year compared to previous years. It was apparently boosted by questions about what it means to be a woman. John Kelly, senior director of editorial at Dictionary.com. noted that ‘this year, the very matter of the definition of the word “woman” was at the center of so many consequential moments, discussions, and decisions in our society’.
What Kelly meant by his statement is that because of the constant challenge to the traditional definition of a woman as an ‘adult female human being’, its meaning can no longer be taken for granted. It appears that for Dictionary.com. and for Kelly the dispute over the definition of a woman is of merely lexical significance. That questions raised about the meaning and status of a woman touched on the foundational question of what it means to be a human was of little interest to Dictionary.com. The matter of fact way that justified its decision indicated that it was indifferent to the societal consequence of the dethroning the sexual binary.
Indifference to the power of language by people who should know better has assisted the corruption of our vocabulary. At least Dictionary.Com has not gone as far as Cambridge Dictionary, which has updated its definition of the word woman to include men. According to Cambridge, a woman is now any adult ‘who lives and identifies as female’ even if they had a ‘different sex at birth’. That is, they are a woman even if they are in a possession of male XY chromosomes and are in possession of a penis.
Indifference to semantic engineering means that the biological binary and the classical distinction between men and women may soon be defined out of existence.
Ever since the outbreak of the Culture Wars, indifference to the issues at stake has allowed attacks on western civilisational values and norms to make significant headway. As an academic working in a British University, I directly experienced the indifference displayed by colleagues towards the early phase of the emergence of what is today characterised as Cancel Culture. Time and again I was told off for taking attacks on free speech too seriously. Even today academics and their colleagues in the media and other cultural institutions often contend that there is no problem on this score and that the notion of a free speech crisis is a myth.
When in response to the first attempts to introduce trigger warnings to course material, I raised the alarm, I was criticised for ‘over-reacting’. Many academics reassured me that trigger warnings were a passing fad, others stated that they were not a big deal. No one today can claim that the use of trigger warnings is a fad. Thanks to the indifference of people who should have known better, trigger warnings have become a fact of life. In 2022, even harmless children’s books like Black Beauty or Robinson Crusoe have become suitable targets for trigger warnings.
In 2022, the irrational cause of transgenderism has been the main beneficiary of the culture of indifference. Arguably most people know that playing around with pronouns is something of a joke. They also understand that the biological distinction between man and a woman is a scientifically validated fact. While many rationally minded citizens are horrified by the claim that a woman need not be a biologically constituted female, a significant section of society is indifferent to the assertion that the possession of a penis need not disqualify someone from claiming the status of a woman.
Indifference to the irrational ideology of transgenderism has led to a situation where young people are often taught that their real identity may not be linked to the sex that they were alledgedly assigned at birth. Indifference to the content of children’s education has led to a situation where many adults are not prepared to make a fuss about a curriculum that indoctrinates children to reject scientifically validated facts about the distinction between a man and a woman.
Behind Indifference
In the contemporary era, indifference is not simply a personal attitude but also a culturally validated accomplishment. People are not born indifferent to the challenges confronting their society. They have acquired the habit of indifference through a regime of socialisation to which they have been exposed throughout most of their life.
Above all, Western culture today encourages the attitude of indifference through its validation of the value of non-judgmentalism. As I noted elsewhere, non-judgementalism has become one of the most important values in the Anglo-American world. The authority of non-judgementalism legitimates the attitude of evading judgement about different, often competing, values and cultural practices. Yet the valuation of non-judgementalism itself possesses no inherent positive ethical qualities. It is symptomatic of indifference at best, and moral cowardice at worst, reflecting a reluctance to struggle with the meaning of moral boundaries.
The reluctance to criticise and confront others’ beliefs and opinions closes the door to the elaboration of a mutually agreed public consensus. Paradoxically, the practice of non-judgementalism reinforces the psychic distance between people and fortifies the boundaries that separate them. Indifference discourages people from taking each other’s views seriously. It leads to what the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has characterised as adiaphorization.
The term adiaphorous means something that is neither good or bad. It conveys the meaning of indifferent or neutral. For Bauman, adiaphorization refers to systems and procedures that help to detach the evaluation of issues from the domain of morality. It implies the institutionalisation of moral indifference and moral neutrality. Once the domain of morality is side lined or relegated into insignificance society becomes incapable of upholding its values and way of life.
Those who are in the forefront of changing our language, the way we think and what we value expect us to remain indifferent. But thankfully there are millions of us who are far from indifferent to our predicament. We are not prepared to march into the Brave New World prepared for them by morally neutral social engineers. If indifference is the master word of 2022, let 2023 be the year of engagement and responsibility .
Have A Great 2023!!!!
“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.”
― Helen Keller