<underfire> chaos and compassion

[Allan Siegel]

Greetings

In the context that Bracha describes –a micro level of activity/ 
exchange between Israeli/Palestinian/Jew/Muslim/Christian – this is  
where it seems ‘compassion’ become more comprehensible. From my own  
experiences these are the types of events in which a convergence of  
the political, the artistic and the philosophical is a possibility.  
Items which I consider to be inseparable (the forms of synergy  
between these elements is another discussion).

The scale of an operation/action/event neither attests to nor  
reflects it importance. Rosa Parks sat in the front of a bus in  
Birmingham, Alabama and galvanized the civil right movement. To give  
but one example. What is more at issue is how one sees oneself as a  
political person, artist, philosopher, waiter, nurse, teacher,  
musician, doctor, coal miner, etc. etc….
As reflected in this wide ranging discussion, there are a myriad of  
issues and questions at play reflecting the different societies we  
live in. Both in the neighborhood (reflected in school shootings and  
other acts of random violence) and on the national/global level ‘A  
"chaos" has now completely, and for years to come, replaced the  
orderly world of the Cold War.’ (Alain Joxe) Among other things, what  
this signifies is the transitory nature of the present moment – a  
Yeatsian moment ‘where the center cannot hold.’ Now the normative  
values of the Enlightenment have little traction. To assume that this  
traction will return (because the Republicans lose an election or  
other electoral adjustments in the political landscape) is illusory.

a.s.
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