Indifference can mean one or two out of three things. In the vast potential field faced every waking hour the outcome of choices is meaningless, the potential field reads nothing or cannot be interpreted, or a choice is not understood properly.
What people choose every day is determined either by values or circumstances, or both. It does not matter in this context if a choice is not a conscious one, the rules still apply. As the circumstances change, so do values. Thus, we face a mighty metaphysical cluster of circumstancial subjections derived from personal realities created by cognitive processes. To try to understand and study these processes is almost impossible due to the fact of human beings having constant trouble telling virtues and values apart. Hell, most of the literate population cannot tell the difference between morals and ethics, and they still call themselves "human beings". The only reasonable way to study such things is by observing how the said morals, ethics and values are actually manifested in retrospective. Those actual manifestations have to be put in the right context, meaning that the circumstances, and the remorseless peer pressure of social interaction, have to be analyzed and understood.
If virtues are ideals, what are values?
If we accept the aforementioned to be plausable, and keep in mind that every single action a human being manifests is selfish, or has its origins in selfish motives, we find that any virtue as an example of moral excellence, and any value as a belief in virtue(s), are actually both dogmas. They do not exist anywhere but in the metaphysical quasi-realities of men.
If an attitude is a meta-reaction towards arisings depending on the given circumstanses combined with the accumulated experience data, then a value is an attitude mirrored against a correspondent virtue.
As an example: general attitude towards death and euthanasia. A recent survey made in the USA (Leslie Kane, 2010) gave a following result: 46% of physicians agree that physician-assisted suicide should be allowed in some cases; 41% do not, and the remaining 14% think it depends. It can be said in broad terms, that the attitude towards euthanasia seems to be somewhat favorable among general population in the Western World. According to Ezekiel Emmanuel "the distinction between active and passive euthanasia is morally significant and legalising euthanasia will place society on a slippery slope, which will lead to unacceptable consequences". I will take that one a notch further. If the members of general population, whom at least theoretically are in favor of euthanasia, would be marched into an ICU, and then ask to pull the plug (or pull the trigger, the end-result is the same), the attitude would change. This is actually what Emmanuel proposes: letting someone die, and being a part of an event chain that leads to death, are two distinctively different things to human beings. Playing Pontius Pilate is is a-okay while the doing the Kevorkian is not? I really do not understand how legalising euthanasia would place society on a slippery slope unless the society in question is already in such a state. One has to remember that the society in question passed 114 death penalties in 2010 alone, and since 1976 it has executed over one thousand.
Ultimately, the discussion and the dilemma are not actually about euthanasia in itself, but about the proverbial hand washing of those who have to make choices about life and death. The discussion is not about the justification, but about the consequences to those who remain behind to live with that choice. The virtues are out of the window, the values seem to be vague and the attitudes turn as quickly as a coat turns on a politician when a minister's seat is within a grasp.
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