Humanitarian in the Abstract; Protester of the Iconic
An Elegy for the Ineffectual Millions and a Eulogy for the Few Caretakers and Reformers
by Edwin L. Young, PhD
March 13, 2010

Some people care for humanity while treating a person next to them in need like either a piranha or a pariah.

Some people take care of persons in need or in trouble while closing their minds to horrible plights of millions of embattled or starving persons far away.

Some people see the offender or the homeless as persons with bad character and bad intentions and blame them.

Some people see the offender or the homeless as persons who are products and victims of a bad and insensitive society and blame it.

Some people are humanitarians in the abstract and misanthropes toward individuals.

Some people are both misanthropes and philanthropists.  Maybe philanthropists because they are misanthropes.

Some people engage in protests toward acronyms of powerful associations but live daily lives like the majority of oblivious conformists.

Some people feel powerless in life and feel powerful when waving a poster amidst protest demonstrations against a powerful association.

Some people try to correct the flaws of a harmful society while caring for the persons who are the flawed products of that harmful society.

Millions seek their fifteen minutes of fame yet are thereby unwittingly making their biggest contribution fostering infamy.