Monday, 13 March 2017

Too much despair

About 30 years ago, the famine in Ethiopia became a big story and millions of people responded to the call. Live Aid was launched and hundreds of millions of dollars were raised from individual donations by people from many countries. We lived a great storm of generosity.

In the last few days, the UN has launched a major humanitarian appeal to respond to dramatic famine situations in Yemen, Somalia and the Sahel. The UN stated this was a crisis of unheard dimensions.
The appeal got a few minutes of attention here and there.

The fact of the matter is that we are inundated with catastrophic news. And we have seen so many pictures of human suffering on our TV screens that we have become indifferent. We have “banalized” distress and death. And we might have also lost a good deal of our humanity. Or maybe, not. It could just be that we are deeply confused by the political horrors we are witnessing these days. We might just feel too powerless.

I wonder.


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