The Profound Gesture of Turning Away
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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?
Yeah, I mean, that's the interesting thing is that part of my understanding is that really since the mid-20th century, the years after World War II and ever more since then, there has been a kind of discourse, a rhetoric around the moral obligation to pay attention, right? We understand paying attention as a guardrail against atrocity, against violence, against suffering. we're kind of constantly told, don't turn away, don't look away.
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.
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