Religion; Tradition: No Hope

Twenty years ago, it was claimed that caring people had began to suffer the guilt that accompanied "compassion fatigue", the post-Live Aid inability to mobilise against the continued want in the Third World. However much it mattered, it was deemed impossible to maintain public empathy as donors began to refocus upon concerns in their own lives.

I think the same is happening in the Middle East, where Third World Bully Israel over-reacts and pounds its poorer neighbours in a tedious spat between cultures that will destroy innocent lives needlessly. It's not as though western liberals don't care anymore, or that there isn't the will to do something about it: I just think that people have sussed that there is no end to this conflict as none of the protagonists want it to end. The conclusion reached therefore, is to focus on what CAN be achieved in the world.

When I hear Israeli ministers—the elected representatives of a democracy—shouting at BBC interviewers because they've been asked to account for themselves, or listening to Palestinian mothers saying how proud they would be if their son became a suicide bomber, then I cannot imagine how such a fucked up region could ever reach an equilibrium. And I suspect that this notion has begun to influence otherwise positive, radical thinkers into creating a blind spot regarding the sensory over-load coming from the Middle-East. More people died in one suicide bombing in Baghdad yesterday than at the hands of the Israelis. This will continue tomorrow, and so on.

So what can we do? A plague on both their houses?

Maybe we draw breath and consider the folly of concentrating on what's happening now, and begin to consider the ridiculous possibility that there's a 0.1% chance that, in time, SOMETHING, (possibly something unimaginable to our generation) may shift in the history of the region that will make the current options untenable to the protagonists. It is therefore everyone's responsibility to ensure that that 0.1% chance is not obstructed, because it's the only one on the table.

Personally, I feel that the world's fate has fallen into the hands of a those that never matured beyond the mindset of 14 yr old boys, who "ain't gonna be dissed, init!" as the work of centuries of western enlightenment is about to disappear down the toilet because it has too many shades of grey for their polarised world.

And the only superpower available is in the hands of a certifiable idiot.