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Mon Jan 5 22:01:15 GMT 2009

From: pbjorn at emh.org> These messages are surely eloquent and heart-felt. But at what point does our reliable and unanimous dismay merely serve to define our collective fecklessness?

--> I agree with "eloquent and heart-felt"...
But I don't think that the expression of dismay defines fecklessness!

If you define fecklessness as "worthlessness due to being feeble and ineffectual" (I found this in a few dictionaries) then I disagree with you. Regardless of whether you support the views expressed or not, expressing them is not necessarily worthless. It might not be effective to express dismay, when it comes to resolving the problem, but neither is it effective for you to criticise people for expressing it.

> peace... utterly unsustainable.

--> I have no evidence to contradict your statement in the slightest. In this light, I suspect that some who "merely" express dismay are similarily unable to work out what else they could personally do which is more effective...

> We, the Civilized, can be shocked by the savagery of crude rockets and bomb vests; but until we're as outraged...

--> I do not claim to be "the civilised". Neither I am shocked by the savagery you mention, although I used to be many years ago (one gets used to hearing about it). As for being outraged about poverty and unemployment (be it in the middle east, Zimbabwe or various worse-off parts of most continents), I am not sure that this will be effectual either. We often discover "outrage" at injustice to be the motivation behind other retaliative outrages...

> Above all, we should stop pretending we're perplexed or surprised.

--> Some people still are perplexed - perhaps they are not pretending. As you said, "heart-felt"...

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