Kurt and Chad

Kurt Vonnegut died last week. In his memoir he said that he gave up on humanity: ' Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too.' This is a man who witnessed WW2 at first hand and then lived long enough to witness George W.

I've been thinking about Kurt and until yesterday found myself shrugging my shoulders thinking Kurt was probably right, after all what do you do with a crippling sense of powerlessness coupled with a belief that as a species we're beyond redemption? Giving up seems logical.

If I accept Kurt's viewpoint then should I lead a life without a sense of responsibility for other people? If I come across a man badly bleeding in the street, should I leave him, there are bound to be plenty of other people bleeding too? What about when I sit down to the TV or the paper and see pictures of the thin, beaten down black people? I feel something twitch It's a short twitch in the stomach nothing more, I turn the newspaper, flick the channel and they're gone. Phew.

Seemed fairly straight forward but despite Kurt's words I'm not getting the phew feeling. It won't come for me like it did yesterday. There's 'little skeletal black child' in Chad but I know that he's still there, or another just like him. He's lying there with nothing in his stomach, dead parents blood on his face and a cameraman walking away from him, leaving him alone in the world again.

Kurt may be right, but he was a tired old man and that old word 'maybe' is still there - I keep coming back to that chance that we could each do something amazing if we bothered - how could improving the quality of another's life be a waste of time? How can giving up be enough to sustain me when I've barely started thinking about other people?

here's a link . If you are like me and oblivious to one of the many catastrophes that befall other people, you could have a look at it and if nothing else you could say you didn't ignore it.