There's an honest, mental response to the various - and frequent - atrocities that take place abroad; unpleasant goings-on, away down in the hazy deserts and up the sandy mountains.
At times, it's a fantastically effective way to sedate the ever-nagging conscience, imagining that the victims who suffer war, murder, rape, drought, famine, are almost subhuman: that they somehow even don't deserve much better. They live in those hazy, dead deserts and sandy, long extinct mountains, after all. What do they expect? They really should just light their Calor fires and step into the warm.
And when we watch them through our sitting-room TVs, they often appear almost ethereal, wraith like. Is it human? Of course it is, but just not as we know it. If only television worked precisely the opposite way - instead of slowly dishing out frontal lobotomies to its millions of viewers, the idiot box allowed us to see deep into the minds of its victi... sorry, subjects - would we see such a very different pattern of thoughts as those that decorate the insides of our own heads?
Yes, probably. Those people don't think the same as us, because for the most part we are warm and happy and nicely maintained by our government; why on Earth would one person who has had to deal with only their own, trivial little life - experienced a couple of deaths, under pressure where they work and hanging out with circle of friends who just never seem to keel over from something contagious - be able to relate to another who has watched their immediate family die in front of their eyes or has had to walk 15 miles whilst coughing up phlegm from that irritating tuberculosis?
Are you nodding like you know what the hell I'm writing about yet? If so, then you are one who is committing that very act that drives me to severe disappointment in human spirit. You're forcing yourself to emote about things you honestly couldn't care less about and it's just unnecessary.
Pseudo-tears aren't going to make them take a second look at you when you're peering up at the pearly gates. That sounds pretty harsh and judgmental, but the point that I'm trying to make is that people spawned from the kind of life where they've never experienced true hardship and loss - and most of us, especially the young people that are marching today in Glasgow against attacking Iraq, haven't - shouldn't feel disappointed in themselves if they can't shed a few tears for the souls of men and women they'll never meet.
When I sat down and watched the news on 11.9.01, my thoughts weren't "Why?! Why is life so cruel?" they were "I wonder how long I'm going to have to sit here and look concerned before I can go and get a bagel." That looks awful, I realise, and that's how I felt. Awful and bad and unpleasant. When a friend of mine told me something very similar I looked at him, shocked.
Are we desensitised and flawed beyond repair? Is it that people don't care anymore? That's ridiculous. Most people know what it is to lose somebody who is close to you - a grandparent, an old friend - and know what it is to cry real tears. Tears that embarrass you deep down, not because you know there is no feeling in them, but because you know that it would hurt the dead to know you were dwelling on them so.
A pretty large chunk of the blame should be wedged in the big office that says "World Media" on it. When you watch forty different news shows, you can see that they're all the same and all of them are presented in a way that makes it pretty easy to pretend you're devastated. The news-readers furrow their brows with every ounce of pseudo-emotion they can muster and 4 million viewers sit at home and exclaim "Oh, my God," at the television. It's at the television, not the story being rerun and retold again and again.
Fighting and speaking out for a supposedly worthy cause is only of worth if you know what the fighting songs mean that you're singing, if you can explain to somebody else why you're marching and why you're firing shots in the air without resorting to anger and guilt to convince them then by all means keep blocking traffic so that people in your own town have a valid reason to start blubbering.
I'm not making a stand against passion, rather I'm complaining about the lack of it. Real passion for a belief or an idea; for a dream that must be worked towards: THAT is passion and belief, not the tired fake sorrow that so many of us live our lives out by singing, with that as inspiration. You can fake emotions, but you better be a bloody good actor if youâre going to convince yourself.
So, I ask just this one thing. Scream when you need to and march when you have to; for the sake of all you know and love, never be afraid to stand against war, corruption and death. But don't cry when all the tear-drops are doing is placating the most shallow of surface-waters in your pool of consciousness. The news isn't a slushy movie, so don't be afraid if the events don't tap into your mind and provoke an emotion.
Ironic though may be, your eyes are only still dry because you're still human.