Psychic Numbing Explained

The purpose of this post is to give the proper context of my musings on Yad Vashem. If you are already familiar with the concept of psychic numbing than please skip this post.

This is a re-posting of a blog post I wrote four years ago during my time at Stand. The original post sadly no longer exists, although it was reproduced on the Sudan: The Passion of the Present blog. Unfortunately the text there is incomplete, so I have taken that re-posting and am re-writing the end to the best of my ability.

-----------

Often times, when I see my fellow advocates trying to convince others about how serious the humanitarian crisis in Darfur is, they focus on the numbers - 400,000 dead, 2.5 million displaced, 4 million relying on aid to survive, etc., but to their bewilderment, the people that they speak to just don't care. I recently read an article about this, and I believe that it has important implications for the work we, as Darfur advocates, carry out.

In the journal Judgement and Decision Making, author Paul Slovic examines this phenomenon in an article entitled "Psychic Numbing and Genocide." It's about how numbers are ineffective at conveying the mass atrocities being committed in Darfur. While we know the value of one human life, we can't comprehend what that value would be multiplied by 400,000. We are, therefore, overwhelmed by the statistics. Studies that Slovic cites show that feelings become less intensive when the victim group goes from being even just one person to two.

This suggests that instead of discussing the enormity of the crisis, we must come up with ways to personalize it. We need to provide something more tangible than numbers alone. As advocates, we must realize that Darfur is not about numbers - it is about people.

For me, the story that captures the essence of Darfur is about a decision that most families have to make on an almost-daily basis: who to send to get supplies. Often, the eldest woman in the family is sent. This seems counter-intuitive, but actually makes sense upon closer examination. If the family sends a man, young or old, he is liable to be murdered. If a young woman is sent, she is liable to be raped. Thus, the oldest woman in the family is sent, as she is least likely to be killed, and least likely to be raped - but keep in mind that she is not immune to either. The comparison is merely relative. No family should ever have to make such a decision. Ever.

Next time you meet someone who doesn't know anything about Darfur, don't bombard them with statistics. Instead, I encourage you to share the above story with them. As well, below are links to two other fantastic tools that will help you tell the stories behind the statistics.

Children's drawings from Human Rights Watch

If you are to send one link to the uninformed, this is it. Nothing does a better job of putting a face on the genocide in Darfur.

Google Earth Images of destroyed villages

Each one of those little round and square dots represents a burnt/destroyed home. Each dot represents a family forced to flee their home with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and whatever they could carry.

*** As an addendum to this, I think it's important to mention the "Stand for the Dead" campaign which was launched in my final year with Stand and led by Aneil Jaswal. The campaign was generously created for us by the global advertising firm J. Walter Thompson. The campaign video, which they created for us can be found below: