Perils of Indifference

1. The danger of equality
2. During the 16th century in Mesoamerica the Aztec would sacrifice one human being every day as a way of helping the sun to rise. No one wondered how a human sacrifice pertained to the the natural phenomenon that is the sun. They just did what they had been doing for years because the Aztec people believed that the sacrifices were the reason the run was rising, and so it became tradition. In the same way that the Aztecs went with their tradition of human sacrifice the townspeople in "The Lottery" would sacrifice one person every year. The townspeople would all draw a piece of folded paper out of a box and the person who received the paper with the black dot would get stoned. In The Lottery no one questioned why a human sacrifice was required, it was simply tradition so everyone went along with it. Objections would only come from those who were to be stoned otherwise there was no questioning what they believed to be "the norm".  Both times practiced human sacrifice as a way of achieving what they wanted, and they believed that it was abnormal to stop doing it since it had been going on for so long.
3.Perils of Indifference and The Lottery both include the bystander affect. In Perils of Indifference by Elie Wiesel he talks about how people just stand by and watch as injustice takes place in the world because they are too lazy to do something about it. Hitlers reign went on for so long that Germany had turned into "Hilter's Germany". Why did it take so long for the Holocaust to end? People weren't willing to rebel against the disaster sooner, it didn't need to take so long for change to occur. In the Lottery the townspeople would gather in the town square and do roll call to make sure no one was left out of this event. When Tessie was pleading for her life no one stood up for her and asked for the stoning to stop, they just wanted to get it over with and continue on with their daily routines. People are lazy in the sense that they believe it is simply easier to be a bystander than to step in and make a difference and speak out against conformity.