Another factor that prevents the masses from extending themselves, from placing their vulnerable bodies and minds in dangerous situations that might require sacrificial acts of heroism, is a refusal to even recognize certain situations as dire.

We’re more comfortable with mulling over the moral complexities of a situation from the safety of our homes and churches than we are with moving out into the streets of the world. Were we to step up from our couches, the grasping hands of the suffering might find purchase on our nice clothes and pull us into unsanitary situations incompatible with continued ignorance. It’s difficult to ignore cries for help when surrounded by the plaints of the poor, the shouts of the refugee, and the piercing whispers of the abused. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to just remained seated. There’s a kind of safety in immobility, the illusion of continued freedom in a refusal to act.

We’re far more likely to recognize—or create—dichotomies that call us to judgment than those that call us to action: “Please don’t ask me to distinguish between the haves and have nots, between those I’m in a position to help and those whose friendship benefits me. I’d much rather expend time and energy casting aspersions at “bad” art and our school’s competitors, than actually doing something to help those in need . . .”

Unwilling to recognize and respond to evil right where it really exists, that is, we create adversaries we can ridicule from a distance—persons, institutions, and products whose primary function (within our own little schemata) is to receive our venom.

In this way, we complement laziness with artificial abhorrence.

Simply put, humans of all cultures and climes seem to believe that identity = singularity. Instead of being content with the uniqueness of our own life experiences, each of us feels compelled to create difference—and thereby distance between ourselves and others. Consider the us-against-them equation as we apply it to everything from sports rivalries and national politics to business competition and art movements. How often do we invest as much emotion in disliking something we have decided to reject as in enjoying something we have warmly embraced? Think about it.

Problem is, this kind of dichotomizing practice can devolve quickly from amusing pastime into unhealthy error. I would even go so far as to suggest that our tendency to define ourselves more through difference than consonance predisposes us towards all kinds of sin . . .

Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda (2004) displays just these kinds of human failings in all their ugliness.

Humanities’ polarizing impulse provides the film with its central tragedy: the Belgian colonizers who once controlled Rwanda employed the old divide-and-conquer approach, arbitrarily splitting the subjected nation into two groups to better control them, and then, after losing interest in the country, left the Hutus and Tutsis to squabble amongst themselves for power. Genocide ensues.

The second tragedy arrives midway through the movie when the United Nations and the world-at-large decide to let these factions fight it out. Instead of putting western lives in danger, the rich nations involved in the Rwandan peace process pull out of the country and let the “animal-like” Africans—who are really little different then themselves—kill one another indiscriminately. Unable to determine who is in the right and who in the wrong, the West decides inaction is the better part of valor.

How typical of the West.

How typical of human nature.