It was my turn to present chapter six in our English sharing this week. I picked the line Bauman keeps returning to when he writes about the Holocaust and modernity: inhumanity as a function of social distance.
At first it reads like academic jargon. Translated into plain words it is quite simple: the further away someone is, the easier it is for ordinary people to harm them. Bauman borrows Milgram’s obedience experiments, but his point is not that some people are born cruel. His point is that cruelty is often arranged by distance.
Distance is not only metres
I started out reading distance as physical distance, and only while speaking did I realise it has at least three layers: physical nearness, psychological detachment, and group boundaries. All three show up in Milgram’s lab and in ordinary life.
1. Physical distance: suffering you cannot see is easier to continue
In Milgram’s experiment, when the victim was in the next room and could be heard, only 40% of participants went all the way to the highest level. With a wall between them, that number rose to 62.5%.
What changed was not the belief that the victim was in pain. The pain simply left their field of view. Once it is out of sight, it becomes much easier to remove yourself from the result: it was not me, it was the procedure.
2. Psychological distance: seeing a person as a row in a spreadsheet
The second layer is detachment: seeing someone as a task, a number, a line item in a cost model, rather than a person with a life.
Think about a round of layoffs. On the spreadsheet a manager sees headcount, salaries, and savings. They do not see rent, children, or hospital bills. Approving that list is as light as deleting a row. But if they have to tell each person face to face, and watch them take in the sentence “what happens to me next month”, signing becomes much heavier.
The same decision, made as a spreadsheet and made as a conversation, is not the same decision at all.
3. Group boundaries: belonging feels safer than caring
The third layer comes from group boundaries: loyalty to our in-group can override concern for those outside it.
A few classmates mock someone who is absent from the group chat. Someone posts an embarrassing photo, and laughing emojis follow. Joining in buys approval. Objecting risks being seen as a killjoy. Speaking up for the person who is not there can even look like betraying your friends.
Here distance is produced by belonging: the closer we feel to the group, the less sensitive we become to the person who has been pushed out.
Before pressing confirm
I ended the sharing with three very concrete questions. Before you press confirm, ask who will bear the consequences. Before you approve a cut, ask whose life it represents. Before you follow a group, notice whose voice is missing.
This is less a moral slogan than a habit of operation: put the people who have been abstracted away back into view.
Five questions from the discussion
The questions afterwards were sharper than my script. I am writing down the exchange, including the answers I am still not satisfied with.
Q1: You say many people keep going because they do not want to admit their past choice was wrong. In real society, how do we tell whether we are trapped by our past?
I ask myself two questions. If I started from zero today, would I still make this choice? And does continuing cause harm? If the first answer is no, or the second is yes, it is time to stop.
Q2: You say that inside a system everyone follows the rules and no one feels responsible. In real society, how do we land responsibility on someone concrete?
Make responsibility concrete: clear roles, transparent decisions, real accountability, and protection for the people who question harmful orders.
Q3: How can we tell whether we are following legitimate rules or using them to avoid responsibility?
Two questions again. Who is hurt by this action? And would it still be right if I were the one suffering it?
Q4: In Milgram’s experiment, almost all participants stopped once the two authorities disagreed. But they stopped because the authorities conflicted, not necessarily because they suddenly felt the shocks were wrong. Does that mean pluralism mainly creates doubt rather than genuinely strengthening individual conscience?
Pluralism does not automatically grow a strong conscience, but it breaks the illusion of a single unquestionable authority and forces people to pause and think. That pause is already a step out of obedience.
Q5: You argue that evil is social rather than characterological, and that if the roles in Zimbardo’s experiment were swapped the outcome would be similar. Should individuals still be held responsible for cruel actions? How do we balance blaming the system with holding people accountable?
Social structures explain why ordinary people become cruel, but they do not erase personal choice. People can still refuse, and conscience can still be woken. So we should hold people accountable when they knowingly harm others.
The English I actually took away
The language harvest turned out to be the most practical part. A few expressions worth copying down:
- as a function of — “varies with”, more precise than “depends on” when writing about variables.
- obedience rose as the suffering became less visible — “as” ties two changes together and states a correlation in one clause.
- dismiss their involvement — much closer than “deny” when someone waves away their own part.
- the ease of doing harm increases as … — making ease the subject sounds more written than “it is easier to”.
- overrides concern for — handy whenever you describe a trade-off.
- land the responsibility on someone — natural in speech, and hard to replace with one word.
- pluralism breaks the illusion of a single unquestionable authority — a sentence worth memorising outright.
Writing it all down, I notice what stayed with me was not the numbers but that one line: distance makes it easier for ordinary people to harm others. It explains someone else’s experiment, and it catches me in the moments when my own finger is on the confirm button.
Life needs less overthinking. Do more. Feel more.
