Reincarnation of Social Darwinism?
The war in Palestine is truly more than a geopolitical conflict. It is an unfolding tragedy of human dignity. It is the remorseless destruction of dreams, erasure of identities and obviously a collective moral failure. When the bombs fall over hapless Gaza, they do not merely destroy homes, they destroy the moral foundations of the so called modern world. The silence that follows deepens the wounds of an innocent battling for life in a half destroyed hospital in Gaza. The silence of governments, of intellectuals and of global institutions is not born out of ignorance. It is born out of a vibrant sociological truth that humanity today, unfortunately, still operates under a resurrected form of Social Darwinism, where the powerful dictate not only who shall rule but also who shall grieve.
The world’s indifference to Palestinian suffering reveals something deeper than political bias. It exposes the persistence of capitalist rationality, imperialist hegemony, and moral hierarchy. All the sociological and political discourses of a colonial world order continue to shape our collective conscience. What a pity !
Since 7 October 2023, more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, lakhs have been injured, countless residential buildings have been reduced to rubble and over a million have been displaced. Dear readers, these are not cold numbers. These are mothers, children, teachers, houses, streets, dreams and future potentials tormented and subjected to an unimaginable agony.
To reduce them to numbers is to commit another violence, the violence of abstraction. For every unnamed casualty, humanity loses a heartbeat. The world’s moral pulse weakens each time we scroll past an image of Gaza without feeling rage or grief.
Why do I call it the reincarnation of social darwinism?
Social Darwinism is the idea that in human social life only the strongest survive and the weak are natural casualties in the struggle. While the term is old, its logic persists in how policies privilege certain lives over others and how suffering is accepted as inevitable and not something that can be averted. It is a shame that we let the powerful justify violence in the name of security. Security form what ? From unarmed innocent Palestinians? Or from a teenager searching for the dead bodies of his parents in the rubble of his sweet home?
In the Palestine context, the siege, blockade, restricted access to food and water, medicine and media and the destruction of civilian infrastructure can be seen as practices that enforce conditions under which many cannot survive. This reflects what lives actually matter and what casualties deserve to be mourned. The silence of the unaffected nations in turn escalates this non-sensical war against humanity. This silence is not ignorance. It is the deliberate indifference of a world that has restructured itself around a resurrected Social Darwinism, where the powerful decide not only who may rule, but also who may grieve.
Sociologically, the world’s indifference to Palestine reveals a chilling truth that we continue to live under the shadow of capitalist rationality and imperialist hegemony. In Marxian perspective, the suffering of the poor has become invisible because it does not generate profit, the war industry and the media economy thrive with it as cancer cells thrive on body cells. The weapons that annihilate Gaza are justified in parliaments. Behind every warplane lies a chain of capital that feeds on destruction. We must not forget that the oppressor’s strength lies not only in his arms, but in our apathy.
A call for collective action and empathy
Dear readers, it is about time we reclaimed our collective conscience. Silence can no longer be the language of the living. To remain neutral in the face of this brutal oppression is to stand with the oppressor. Empathy must once again become revolutionary. It must cross borders, races, religions, and politics.
This is not a call for charity but a call for solidarity, for the recognition that an injury to one is an injury to all. The moral survival of humanity depends on our ability to act, to speak, and to refuse to subscribe colonial discourses.
Let us not allow history to record that we watched as Gaza burned. Let it instead record that we refused to be silent that we stood for life, for justice and for the dignity of all humans.
Tailpiece: When Gaza cries, the world should tremble. And if it does not, then perhaps it is not Gaza that has died, it is humanity.
Tasaduq Maqbool Bhat , PG Sociology student at University of Kashmir.
