The Price of Silence

I've been reading a book by the illustrious sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences - ISBN 0-7456-2012-4. Already in the first chapter something caught my attention, and I'll transcribe it here so that you may share in my bewilderment:

"The price of silence is paid in the hard currency of human suffering."

Is that not what we all witness in our daily lives? Whether we see it around us and amongst us, or whether we merely watch it on TV, what is evident to all of us is that there is much human suffering all about us. What we each know in our hearts is that suffering begets suffering and that we are each and all responsible for interrupting this cycle of misery. That we may or may not be the direct cause of someone’s agony is far less relevant than the fact that we may act to resolve it and to put an end to that suffering.
Nevertheless, let us all not fool ourselves in that most of human suffering is caused by humans; greed being the chief motivation. Some among us are actually architects of the main torments that torture humanity, but all of us are responsible to some extent.
Inaction, silence, apathy are all symptoms we all share in our Society. We each shield ourselves within the comforts and distractions of our lives; making ourselves content to acknowledge that there is suffering and that there is nothing we may do to end it. Yet, there is much that each individual can do. Among the simplest attitudes one finds that by choosing well those who would lead us, by denying disreputable practices their unjust reward and by fomenting just practices in our working environment and in our families, we would be already contributing to an extent toward the purging of human suffering. Should we endeavour to do more? Absolutely! However, in pursuing to reward justice and fairness, which is to say among many things that one should earn that for which he has worked and that alone, we would have a start.
Defeatism: Therein lies the sin of our ways.