Several years ago I saw a documentary of some of the stuff that went down at Abu Ghraib prison. It involved the soldiers there treating the POWs inhumanely and taking pictures of them in humiliating positions while themselves posing with smiles, pointing, or thumbs up. When the pictures came out, the general public was appalled and the soldiers faced serious consequences. They interviewed a couple of them, and I remember one of them just shaking her head in the interview and saying, "I don't know why I did that". And she really seemed like she meant that.
I was reminded of this story recently after a situation at work. I can't go into any details without totally violating HIPAA, so sorry, I must be vague. But it involved a type of person whose life circumstances can be difficult to understand and who can be very much repugnant to the average citizen. We laughed and joked and shook our collective head about this person and it ended it up causing concern with our management. Truth be told, it wasn't really something I thought much about until it was addressed from someone else's perspective. And that's when I saw the link.
People in certain professions (like healthcare) or in certain situations (like war) sometimes develop their own little sub universe. Their day to day experiences are so far removed from what the average person experiences, sometimes so harsh and unglamorous, that as time goes on amongst themselves they develop a different sense of morality. We as people are much less firm in our values than we often think. If we are surrounded by people who are acting, talking, and thinking a certain way we will often begin to behave the same way. Even though the wrongness of something doesn't change, it stops feeling wrong. The social pressure isn't there, and unless you appeal to a moral standard that's higher and are committed to it, people can find themselves behaving in ways they never thought possible. But then when the curtain lifts and your actions are exposed to the greater world, suddenly the light comes on. You feel their disgust and judgement and are suddenly truly aware of the wrongness in your behavior.
A certain callousness forms in professions that are constantly dealing with the baser sides of humanity, and constantly exposed to death and dying. Partially it's a defense mechanism, but also I think it's a culture. Sheer repetitiveness starts to take the emotional edge off of things that are very sad. The constant tide of needy humanity starts to wear down your empathy. We often (quite accidentally, I think) start to dehumanize people in healthcare. People become bodies that we work on, suffering becomes an "interesting case", and valuable human souls become benign objects for our discussion and humor. Everyone around us is thinking and talking and acting the same way, so it just doesn't feel wrong. It feels normal. But every now and then the curtain gets pulled back, and the light floods in. And with it comes a sense of shame.
Absolutely correct.
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