The man in the street: ‘Oh, the refugees, they come
from a war zone, blah blah, blah blah…’ This morning’s man in the street, bearded,
aged, drinking coffee outside in the suburbs. A lot of people don’t care about
a lot of things. Politicians Do Not Care about sections of the suffering
public, proud to say so. A speeding driver might say I Do Not Care that someone
was killed in the collision: I have my own problems. Homelessness, family
violence, poverty, distant wars: why care?
Caring
is a subset of attention. We suffer from ethical exhaustion, it’s true; we have
our own problems. We have looser and more burdened attention than we think we
did. Attention, not merely mental activity, includes impressions of courtesy,
consideration, persevering watchfulness. It has traces of the divine. Hagar
says: ‘Thou God seest me’; the divinity pays attention to her case. God, of
course, has endless ways and timeless hours for paying attention. We humans
have to choose.
We have our own problems. How much
attention do they take? We live with others, knowingly or not. Do we hug our troubles
so tight, loving them so dearly? Where does attention rest?
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