See, this is a major mistake. No, people in positions of power in this system are not inhuman, even if their behaviour would suggest otherwise. They aren’t mythical beings bereft of emotion either, they’re people in a system and culture that rewards apathy and allows them to live in a different material reality from the rest of us, where they are insulated from the human effects of their actions.

Think about the distance that exists between you and every act of violence committed against human beings that is necessary for your way of life to exist. The difference is that you have little power over your position in that system, and cannot change it, let alone choose to discard the privileges of your position within that system without fear of death or insecurity. Even though many of us in the metropole do feel a level of empathy for those who suffer to our benefit, there is always distance between them and us. Forgetting them is often as easy as choosing to stop thinking about it, but our own suffering reminds us of the need to recognize the injustice in this way of life.

These people are not forced to recognize that, because their wealth is so excessive that they can continue to insulate themselves from that guilt. If they didn’t understand it was wrong, they’d have less desire to legitimize their privilege and they’d be more generally willing to sacrifice material wealth to mitigate the harm they do, because people who accept their actions tend to want to remedy them where people who refuse them tend to respond by salvaging their conscience. This is important to recognize, because even though their perspectives are consequences of this system, they are still responsible for their own individual actions the same way you and I are.

I understand that this may seem like a harsh response to what was clearly a comment made in frustration and disappointment, but there is a genuine misunderstanding here that can cause harm in itself. To discard their emotion and connection to human life is to write off both the systemic causes of their actions as well as our shared responsibility to end the injustices that this way of life cannot exist without. You are not without emotion when you disregard those who suffer for you – you’ve been put here with very little power to leave and live – buy you are also responsible to stay conscious of how distant you are from that violence. They have more power to change it, and so their choice to disregard that emotional connection to other humans to maintain their comfort is what makes these people irredeemable.