Hi, this is Against Everyone with Connor Habib, a weekly podcast featuring my conversations with

countercultural figures and presenting complex, political, spiritual, and philosophical ideas in an

engaging and accessible way. Albert Speer, who was a close conspirator of Hitler's,

reflected on how he and other Nazis became complicit and participants in the

Holocaust.

And when he was sort of detailing it, he said that he realized that in the process of Nazification,

each man should only think about his task and not be concerned

with that of his neighbor. And this was right down to the most menial functions. You could be

manufacturing something, you could be signing a sheet of paper, but you would be as a Nazi

carrying out your own labor without creating a networked

understanding of what was going on.

Just do your task.

Do this task, then do this test, then do this task.

In other words, there was this kind of mindful fragmentation and compartmentalization that became a key for mass atrocity.

I think that this is potentially bad news for us as we seem to live more and more fragmented

and compartmentalized lives. Fragmentation and compartmentalization are kind of swaddling that keep us safe from

understanding what we're doing to others.

They shelter us from the harm our lives are doing and keep us from seeing what others are

going through.

And I think that this sense of safety breeds a calm sort of apathy.

One of my favorite writers, Susan Sontag, said this very thing. She wrote,

wherever people feel safe, they will be indifferent. Another way of saying this is that

...