Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted as having said that injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere. With all the suffering that there is in the world, I find it difficult to comprehend how anyone can truly enjoy unruffled “happiness”. Those fortunate enough to have been born into kind circumstances, whose health has been relatively unmarred, and who have never experienced major accidental trauma or organized political repression must nevertheless bear some psychological burden on behalf of those who have not been so fortunate. To expect to be able to live in unalloyed bliss while those who are only separated from us by accidents of space and time suffer unimaginably seems to me the height of denial and narcissism. The world just isn’t constructed in that way.
