Is Indifference Really Neutral?

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——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-"Are love and fear the only options?" a colleague once asked me.

It was 2017, and I had begun teaching leaders about moving from fear-based to love-based workplaces. 

"Could there be a third option?" he wondered. “Something neutral, like indifference?”

I sat with that. 

Is indifference neutral? 

Is there a place that is neither in the realm of Love or of fear?

When someone is indifferent, what they are really saying is: “Whatever. I don't care.”

That stance can be harmless when it's about what to eat for dinner or which movie to watch. But indifference toward people, toward their pain, their dignity, their safety, or even their joy, is never neutral. 

Indifference communicates something very clear: 

I don't have your back. Your suffering isn't my concern Harm can happen to you, and I will not intervene.

That is NOT neutral.

That causes abandonment, isolation, and rejection. Ultimately fear.

So no, I came to believe there is no third position. 

There are only two: Love or fear. 

I see living examples of Love chosen over indifference every day in workplaces:

• The professor who spent hours helping a colleague recover after a concussion by setting up their new course in the LMS

• The lead stone mason who drove an extra hour each day to get a coworker to and from work after a drunk driver totaled his car

• The dog groomer, who noticed a teammate growing overwhelmed, stepped in to help wash and dry her dogs

In each case, indifference was an option.

They could have said, “Not my problem.” Instead, they chose to care.

That choice matters. Love in action creates safety … for everyone. It builds trust, strengthens relationships, and makes meaningful satisfrying work possible. With indifference, everyone loses. With Love, everyone benefits. 

This truth does not stop at the office door. It applies to families, communities, and nations.

Today, more than ever before, we in the US are being tested, not by hatred alone, but by indifference.

Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), Holocaust survivor, Nobel Laureate, and human rights advocate, who led a lifelong battle against indifference, said it plainly on October 27, 1986: 

"The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that’s being dead.” 

Historians estimate that in Wiesel's time, only a small fraction of Germans (hundreds of thousands out of a population of over 60 million) were directly involved in the killing apparatus, while millions more were passive supporters, beneficiaries, or indifferent bystanders who did not actively resist the Nazi regime. Many accepted propaganda. Many looked away. Many convinced themselves they didn't know enough, or there wasn't enough evidence, or that it couldn't really be happening. Many excused it because it was legal.

All while people were assaulted, abducted, imprisoned, and killed.

In his address, The Perils of Indifference, Wiesel warned:

“…to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred…Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end.

And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope, is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.”

And here we are again. 

Across the United States today, we are witnessing communities being targeted, families torn apart, and people living in fear of abduction or murder by the federal government. Alongside that fear, we are also witnessing something else: 

People who refuse to be indifferent

In Minneapolis and across the country, neighbors are showing up for one another, warning each other, protecting each other, feeding each other, comforting each other, and standing between vulnerable community members and systems acting extra-judiciously with intimidation and force. They are choosing care over comfort. Love over fear. 

This is what Love looks like in public. 

It is not soft. It is not naïve. It is courageous. 

The question before us … at work and in the world … is not whether we agree on everything. It is whether we care. 

Because indifference is never neutral.

And Love, chosen again and again, is how we remain human.

What does choosing love, rather than indifference, look like right where you are? 

Choosing Love doesn't mean we aren't afraid. It means fear doesn't get the last word.  This is the heart of Loving Leadership and why it matters far beyond the workplace.