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Chapter 1: What is the significance of turning away from those in need?
Exploring both interstellar and interpersonal spacetime continuums. The Last Show with David Cooper. We've all done it. Somebody desperately in need, looking for help. They're suffering. Maybe it's a stranger on the street. Maybe it's a friend. What we've done, we've looked at them, and then we've just kind of turned away. It's nothing new.
People have been doing it since the beginning of civilization. And that's just what author Benjamin Saltzman explores in his upcoming book, Turning Away, The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture. He's also a professor at the University of Chicago. Ben, a joy it is to have you here. Thanks for having me, David. So it is a simple gesture. I live in downtown New York. I'm not proud of this.
It's a gesture I do a lot. Not all the time, but a lot. Is it something deeply ingrained in us as people to kind of turn away when people need help?
Yeah. I mean, I think we've all probably done it, safe to say. And it means a lot when we do. And I think we often think about why we did it. It stays with us for a while. And so that's what I'm interested in. What does this gesture mean? And what does it mean across the ages in art, when it shows up in art and poetry and philosophy?
As many times that we do it, there are as many rationalizations for why we do it. I mean, my favorite one, again, not proud of this, is there's just too many hours in the day. There's so many hours in the day. Like, I just don't have time to help everyone. What are some of the common rationalizations that people have for not helping those in need?
Well, I mean, one of the things that we face now more than ever is the frequency and the speed with which we encounter the suffering of others on our phones, in the street, in the media, the news. And I guess one way to think about it is that our attention is constantly being turned from one act of violence, one instance of suffering to another.
And so the question is, where is our agency in that? Where does our decision making lie? And how do we kind of dwell with that decision when we do turn away from someone?
Also, like this is a completely, maybe it's a bit of a tangent, but like people on the street who are paid to recruit you for charity, you know, like sign up for our service. Like that's a common thing on the street where I live. So I'm constantly having to tell strangers who try to talk to me that like I'm not interested. You come home after doing this. You don't exactly feel good.
Why do so many people struggle with this?
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Chapter 2: Why do we often turn away when witnessing suffering?
And the more that I've thought about it, the more that I've kind of looked at this gesture in a wide variety of contexts, I've come to realize that actually the act of turning away, the gesture of turning away is a deeply human act and experience. And it's an act and a gesture that carries all kinds of meaning. We do it in a a wide range of circumstances. We do it when we feel disgusted.
We do it when we feel shame. We do it when we grieve. We do it when we think or when we feel embarrassed or when we're confronting something sort of awful or even in some cases when we're playing. And the more that I've realized the range and thought about the range of meaning in this gesture, the more I've come to think of it as kind of a – something important actually, right?
To do away with it entirely, to avoid turning away entirely is not only impossible, but it leaves out an opportunity to process, to reflect, to think, to grieve, to feel, right? And yeah, I don't want to get rid of those things because I think they're important to how we relate to the world.
Refusing or choosing not to help somebody coupled with that reflection afterward and feeling horrible afterward. Is there something deeply human about that? That's a structure that plays out for me all the time. I worry what would happen if I didn't, you know, if someone asked me for money on the street and then I said no, and then I just didn't feel bad about it at all, you know?
Yeah. No, that's the dilemma. And there are two things I guess I'd say about that. One is you've probably noticed that if you encounter someone or something that provokes you to turn away, you may – Notice that you still kind of retain the memory of not only the thing you turned away from, but also the act of turning away.
So it stays with you in some ways more powerfully than if you sort of go about kind of constantly paying attention, constantly attending to and looking at everything one after the one after the other. Right. So it stays with you, if that makes sense. And it causes you in some ways to become a question to yourself, to question why you turned away. And I think that's really valuable.
Is there a difference between not helping like a single person, maybe it's a stranger, maybe it's a friend in need versus not helping during political upheaval or mass suffering? Are those two fundamentally the same thing or are there differences there?
I don't know. I think they're related. It's just a matter of scale. And I guess that's why this is such a real dilemma. Where should we direct our action? Where should we direct our attention? And it's really hard to navigate that, especially nowadays where you're constantly encountering things that demand your attention.
Have you given thought to the gesture done by the parent in front of the child? I feel like that was always a weird one. When I was a kid, I'd be walking with my dad and someone would be asking for a buck or two. And there's that whole other dynamic, like as an adult, you're so used to doing it, but is that really the value you want to teach a kid?
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Chapter 3: What rationalizations do people have for not helping others?
And one value that we've, I think, been passing along from generation to generation is like, pay attention. right? Pay attention to the world, pay attention to, you know, difficult, terrible things that are happening. And if you're not paying attention, that's a kind of moral failure. But on the other hand, I think what we should be teaching children too is take time to be thoughtful, right?
Take time to reflect and that enables real action.
Chapter 4: How does modern media influence our perception of suffering?
And so, I'd say like to that scenario of the child observing the parent, a conversation, right, about it might be useful or helpful.
You mentioned this idea of generations to generations teaching. In your upcoming book, you explore kind of the history of this gesture. I know that there's references to like beggars in the Bible. This is kind of a tale as old as time. Are there any historic examples of how people before us, our ancestors, thought of this gesture?
Yeah. I mean, I want to be careful not to suggest that like the ancient past was a kind of golden age of – sort of proper moral attention. But it was definitely a question, right, that was facing philosophers and poets and artists. And so, one of my favorites comes from Plato's Republic.
And there's an anecdote that Socrates tells about this man, Leontius, who is walking along one day and encounters a pile of corpses next to an executioner. And he undergoes this struggle within himself. He notices them first and then he sort of backs away and turns away and then he covers his eyes and struggles.
And then he eventually gives in and looks and then yells at himself and condemns himself. He says to his own eyes, take your fill of that beautiful sight. And it's doing a particular thing at this moment in the Republic. But one of the takeaways, I think, is that this struggle about whether or not to one should look is real. It
reflects a kind of broken a breaking of the self it's a it's a sort of struggle within the self um and um and yeah so that it it signals that there's something important going on there the other thing that's happening is is like a tension between the impulse and the performance um which might also kind of get at some of the questions you're asking right like do
Is he, are we turning away in that moment, covering our eyes because we are like impulsively not wanting to look or are we doing it to perform for others around us because we think we shouldn't look?
Yeah. Well, your upcoming book, Turning Away the Poetics of an Ancient Gesture sounds like an interesting read, Ben. I appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for having this discussion. Thanks, David. I appreciate it. Benjamin Saltzman is an author and professor at the University of Chicago.
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