The Materiality of Moral Distance II

Abstract

Abstract In continuation of Chapter 15, the question tackled is which built worlds or designed spaces, habits and languages, tax schemes and marriage patterns, levels of difference in wealth and income, or online “bubble” effects impact on our capacity to empathically enlarge our circle of understanding and feeling. Phenomena like gated communities, the privatization of public space, gentrification, ghettos, marriage patterns, income, wealth and taxation schemes, echo chambers and language barriers are discussed. Apart from discussing various forms of empathy gulf, the phenomenon of unempathizability is introduced as constituting a radical type of non-relation. Jason Stanley’s notion of flawed ideology is taken up and reinterpreted as allowing justification of certain forms of non-relation.