People in Afghanistan are desperate, struggling to find food and sufficient shelter to withstand the winter, with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) predicting that over half the population are "facing extreme levels of hunger" and nearly 9 million at risk of famine.“You can massacre tens of thousands of Rohingya, you can put 1.5 million Uyghurs in camps, in Yemen people are suffering because they do not have anything to eat, and we don’t feel concerned in our world,” he said.
In Syria there are currently around 850 boys being used as human shields by Islamic State in fighting that has also forced over 45,000 people to flee from their homes, in the middle of winter.
Closer to home, we have 18% of the population in absolute poverty after housing costs, including 25% of children according to government figures [PDF], and predictions suggest that by 2024-25 a third of British children will be living in poverty.
Yet we don't care. At best we say 'that's terrible' and try to remember to donate to a relevant charity. At worst we debate what we actually mean by genocide or poverty and forget that these are actual people's lives we are discussing.
I know there's only so much we can care about. And I know that there's always been awful things happening - that the main difference between now and most of history is that thanks to social media we are able to find out what's going on in places far away and hear directly from individuals affected. And I know that a lot of the conflicts that are going on are at least in part due to historic (and ongoing) meddling by countries like the UK so saying 'we should intervene' isn't the obvious solution it might initially feel. But there does feel like a massive difference between not knowing about the awful stuff that goes on and knowing but not caring.
So how do we stop the indifference? Can we stop it? Is stopping it even something we should try to do? Maybe indifference a protective mechanism that stops us from just spending our entire lives in despair. Can the world be a place where everyone has a good life or is suffering for a significant portion of the population inevitable?