My suspicion is that those who seem oblivious to suffering, whether it is nearby or in remote corners, are for the most part unaware, perhaps blinded by doctrine and ideology. For them, the answer is to develop a critical attitude toward articles of faith, secular or religious; to encourage their capacity to question, to explore, to view the world from the standpoint of others. And direct exposure is never very far away, wherever we live - perhaps the homeless person huddling in the cold or asking for a few pennies for food, or all too many more.
As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists. What they call themselves doesn’t matter to me. The world is full of suffering, distress, violence and catastrophes. Students must decide: does something concern you or not? I say: look around, analyze the problems, ask yourself what you can do and set out on the work!
Whenever there is injustice, oppression, aggression, violence, it's standard for it to be supported by those we now call "intellectuals," but typically not by all; there is typically a fringe of dissidents. With very rare exceptions - in fact, it's hard to think of any - they suffer in one or another way; how depends on the nature of the society.
As a health scientist at Columbia University, Les Roberts, pointed out, sooner or later people are going to be looking at a child in a wheelchair suffering from polio and will say 'the Americans did that to him'. So they continue policies which have similar effects i.e. organising the Taliban. This will come back to them too.
We live in this world, not another one that we'd prefer, and sometimes it's necessary to follow painful paths if we hope to provide at least a little help for suffering people.
