peter wrote:
A senseless mass killing of gay people enjoying a night out in a club, a mass shooting of kids in a school, a bomb strategically placed in a Bhagdad square.........
And on it goes. And on and on ........
And none of these things affect me -except they do........ because like a war weary veteran (dear God forgive me) I find myself empathetically exhausted. The sight of dead children being carried up Greek beaches, shell-shocked people gathering outside French restaurants and photos of men on their knees about to be beheaded no longer cause in me the shocked sense of anger, the howl of outrage at the plight of my fellow man, that they should. Rather I get a sense of disconnection, a tiredness as well, an emotional grey sheet where my normal human feelings should be.
How has this happened. I love my fellow man: i care that people hurt, that their lives go belly up. Thus have I become a vile thing in my own eyes, for my abjecct failure to be able to keep on, to keep on summoning up the appropriate level of horror at the things people do.
To be honest peter, I actually thought you might be echoing an earlier post I'd made in Gen/Disc -
Link
The reason I no longer have any interest in current affairs, local, home, or abroad, is simply the way they make me feel. Depressed.
I thought it would be patronizing of me to suggest that if news is making you feel vile, and you don't like feeling vile, then you can always do something about it.
Besides, it's not like you're in the thick of it. Foreign wars and such like, are not in the neighbourhood, and could be kept at their appropriate distance.
Back in the Seventies, in Harlem New York City USA, the junkies were in so much need of their supply of drugs they would take out house insurance then burn down their house for the payments. In doing so they reduced their neighbourhood to a war zone.
This happens to be the only way I can explain to myself, in order to understand, why my neighbourhood back in Scotland in the 80's was systematically, over a period of two or so years, slowly burned to the ground. At the time there just didn't seem to be any reason for it, other than mindless vandalism.
The cost of repairs was too much for the Council and the land was sold to a private housing concern and they bulldozed the estate.
I visited the place a couple of years later. Their were several buildings still standing, like gravestones, in an otherwise barren field.
That's as close to being a refugee that I have been.
God forbid what it must be like to be bombed out of a neighbourhood, and harrowed from one's own country. Personnal experieces are more than enough for me.
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Well done. 
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