Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 04:37:43 +0000 (UTC) From: anonymous <tlewis-AT-sdf.lonestar.org> Subject: Re: Spectre of Madness Steve wrote: > > 150,000 people die each day and 300,000 are born. My point remains that > if you remove the oppressive and murderous behavior from the equation it > is simply absurd to respond to the normal cycles of life and death as > something to 'care' about in the mass. Rather we should accept that > emotions and personal relationships are precisely that personal. (Though > some interesting and important attempts have been made to write > histories of human emotions). On a social and political level my pitiful > levels of involvement are not related to the individual suffering of the > persons concerned but rather related to an engagement with the social. > > If however you believe that an emotional engagement with the fact of > 150,000 people dying and 300,000 being born is a necessary starting > point - perhaps raising the case of the people murdered and tortured > each day as an especial case over and above the normal deaths in car > accidents and from cancer that occur - then I would have to ask why are > these latter types of people a special case and how would you > differentiate the various sub-types.( i.e. People sentenced to death in > the USA, the concentration camp in Guantanomo Bay, the murder rate in > South Africa, the World Bank created famine in Botswana and so on). And > in the differentiation how you would select which actions to engage in > to change things. "But you had taken on a greater, and more harmful, illusion. The illusion of control. That A could do B. But that was false. Completely. No one can *do*. Things only happen". - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
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