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Originally Posted by terminal pharmacy
Really all can say is "you apathetic cunt" at the moment the toll is nearing 200,000 people, which is as many that died during the 06 boxing day tsunami in Myanmar. In less than two years this country has been absolutely devestated by natural disasters and prior to that decades under dictatorial rule.
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I concur with the above, emotiono-logically; in reality, I sympathise with Mr Rail.
There's an interesting, and rather hopeless point I have about these sorts of things: where McLuhan talks about information becoming noise (that is, an excess of it becomes incomprehendible) we're left floating in an emotional hinterland in the context of 'information about the world being a bit fucked'. Unfortunately, in the face of a litany of disasters which are recurring and renewing themselves (all of which tarred with some political dimension), 'I don't care' seems a more viable option than trying to care about everything.
While I think everyone would like to be involved in charitable/ pseudo-charitable political causes, it's very difficult to make your mind up which one. If I shut out cruelty to dogs from my 'mental list of things to care about', then I free up some emotional space for Sierra Leone; this is at the expense of melting ice caps or poverty in West Pakistan. The point is, because of all this charitable 'noise', it's nearly impossible to make a clear, rational decision of the 'the thing that is most important to me and the future of the world is dolphins' sort. Sadly, it's entirely reasonable to be entirely apathetic about a great many of the world's problems.