1 February to 8 February

Inhumanity: from playground to Genocide

Last week Holocaust Memorial Day was commemorated internationally, as it has been for the past ten years, to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, on 27th January, 1945. Its beginnings thus relate to the need to keep alive the memory of the Nazi Holocaust. However, its roots are deeper and its purpose wider: to draw attention to the inhumanity of which as a species we are capable and have been capable, throughout history: in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia;  the war in Darfur, and all the other shameful periods when differences between people were not celebrated, but employed as a rationale for cruelty and annihilation.

      In November last year, I chaired a conference about bullying and the abuse of power, in Salzburg. Underpinning the ethos that is developing in the project of which the conference was a part, is the idea that bullying is much more significant in human affairs than a bit of name calling in the playground; it is also to be found in international affairs: in relationships between powerful and less powerful nations and in international business. And it is to be found in the lack of empathy and fellow feeling that leads to genocide.

Gavin Fairbairn, Running Stream Professor of Ethics and Language, School of Applied Global Ethics