[Ruth]

Retroman – first of all, let me say that I am not trying to insult you, subtly or otherwise, although you do appear to be insulting me!!

Secondly, and to clarify what I was saying in an earlier post – I cannot feel sorrow over the death of someone who I have never heard of. I cannot grieve for anyone whose death I hear about on the news, although I can feel sadness that someone has lost a life in what is very often a brutal fashion. I do not personally grieve for anybody who died on 9/11, because I did not know anybody who died on that day. However, I do feel sadness that people died in such a horrific fashion (whether it was a government conspiracy, or the terrorist attack that it appeared to be, being killed due to a plane flying into a building must be a horrific way to go).

I cannot personally grieve for every single person that dies, famous or not. You yourself choose not to – as you say, you don’t mourn the death of Diana, and you don’t mourn the deaths of the victims of 9/11 – and that’s your right.

I do feel great anguish and grief over the deaths of people who I have known and cared for, and I feel sadness for other people who have died in a cruel or brutal fashion, whether I have known them or not. But I think that there is a big difference between genuine grief or anguish, and sadness.

I can’t change the world – none of us can, but we can maybe make a small difference. So I prefer to do something practical to try and help people living in certain conditions. I guess you may think it’s hypocritical to help one cause and not another (like giving to one charity and not another).

I know I’m not wording this very well, but what I am trying to say is – there is a big difference between feeling grief and despair at the death of someone who you knew or cared about, and feeling sadness and dismay at the death of people in such a horrific fashion (such as 9/11 and the Tsunami, which examples have already been given).

As for your comments about deaths in the locality where you live (and I know those comments weren’t aimed at me particularly), I am actively involved in trying to make my neighbourhood a better place. As I said in an earlier post, I am more than happy to let you know how I am doing that. But would you then say that I am choosing to help my own neighbourhood and being hypocritical for ignoring other neighbourhoods?

To make my comments about the media clearer – you are correct in that without any media we would never have heard of 9/11 (well, we would have done, but certainly not for a much longer time). However, what I was trying to say, in perhaps a badly worded way, was that I do not need nor trust the media to tell me how I should feel about a particular event, or how upset I should be over a certain matter.

As I said earlier, I was not trying to insult you – it felt rather like the opposite way around! Neither was I using any ‘theatrics’. I have no wish to fall out with you, or anybody else.