It’s no secret that in the past few years, the world has been struck by tragedy after tragedy. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the ever-growing gun violence epidemic to the Israel-Hamas conflict, the number of victims never seems to stop growing. However, despite the fact that the magnitude of these issues is constantly increasing, a dangerous paradox seems to be at play, a phenomenon that Professor Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, coins “psychic numbing.”
Psychic numbing—the disturbing truth that as the number of victims in a tragedy increases, one’s empathy, one’s willingness to help, reliably decreases—is increasingly relevant today, as the atrocities of our time are translated into statistics.
Many still remember June of last year, when the submersible Titan imploded during a deep-sea mission toward the wreck of the Titanic. Enormous resources were deployed to try to recover the five passengers, and millions of people were glued to every tiny development in the story. It was a tragedy for the maritime community. What many may not know, however, is that just days prior, a ship carrying 750 migrants capsized on its way to Italy, and 500 people lost their lives. But the coverage of this disaster—one of the worst tragedies that has ever occurred on the Mediterranean Sea—paled in comparison to the attention given to the Titan’s implosion, and the rescue efforts were completely at odds.
The dangers of psychic numbing have become increasingly apparent in 2024, as leaders at universities continuously refuse to acknowledge the Israel-Hamas conflict, signaling institutional numbness to the gravest slaughter of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Junior Fay Awad comments on the situation, saying, “it’s important for people to recognize that behind every number, there’s a person, and we need to stay aware of these issues, especially as they continue to grow.”
Humanizing tragedies that have been quantified is our best bet at understanding them and a major prerequisite to even beginning to arrive at any solution. It is imperative that individuals collectively become conscious of the atrocities of our time and actively respond to them with action. Only by reclaiming narratives and encouraging people to share their stories can we become aware of the names behind the numbers and the stories beyond the statistics.
