# Not politics: When people become Peoples



## Nunty

This is not meant to be a political discussion, but a philosophical or psychological one.

First, a couple of real-life examples. When life in Jerusalem takes one of its periodic dramatic turns, I write about it for some people in the US and elsewhere. Reactions are... odd. A few years ago, for instance, there were terrorist attacks very, very frequently in Jerusalem. The teenage daughter of a friend was killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up on the bus that she and others were riding to school. I wrote about paying a condolence call to the family, and I wrote about how frightening it was for parents to send their kids to school and for kids to go to school. Around the same time I wrote an article for the journal of our Order in Italy, and I talked about how we had learned to tell the difference between the sound of a sonic boom and the sound of a bomb nearby, about how we knew when there had been an attack out of hearing range of the monastery by the sirens of the numerous ambulance that pass us on the way from downtown to the trauma center, and about our reactions to living in a situation where one learns such things.

Some people felt it very necessary to let me know, in both cases, that yes, well, unfortunate, but the real suffering is among the Palestinians. Israelis have just got to expect that kind of thing as long as they are evil monsters of oppression. The so-called terrorists are only expressing their national rage and their personal frustrations. Not terrorism, really. Freedom fighters, sometimes, but mostly just angry adolescents. Rebel _with_ a cause,  James Dean in a kafiyya. 

More recently, I wrote about the brother of a friend of mine. He lives in the Palestinian Authority, near Bethlehem, and works in a quarry there. A terrible work accident, catastrophic injury to his face. They saved his life, but not his face. The Bethlehem doctors did the very best possible with the resources at their disposal, but it was not really great. He faces many months of painful recovery and surgery, and of seeing his family fall into abject poverty because there is no social insurance system in place in the PA. 

Some people felt it very necessary to let me know that, well, as long as the Palestinians embrace terrorists to their bosom and elect them to government, they cannot expect anything like a functioning social infrastructure. 

Other people felt it necessary to let me know that this is the fault of the evil Israeli oppressor; if they would just leave the Palestinians alone, there would be no problem of financial resources and corruption. 

OK, why is this not political discussion? Because I am very concerned that we no longer see people, but Peoples. We no longer see individuals in pain, but causes and counter-causes. We no longer hear sobbing because we are fascinated by the gory images. What has happened to us? I am very afraid that we are all losing something very important to our being human. 

Yes, this is a bit of a rant, but also an issue I'd like see discussed. Have we become desensitized to suffering? Do we use facile political labels to avoid looking into the face of suffering? Are we willing consumers of information and image overload because in a weird, perverse way it makes things easier on us?


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## geve

Interesting thread and most relevant examples. 

I'm not sure I understand the nuance between "people" and "Peoples", but at the risk of being called a drivelling old fool, I will say once again that I don't like the word "people". Here's a quote from a book I've just finished, and that illustrates well my personal religion: _Ce saugrenu de chacun des êtres, leur éclat individuel, leurs originalités aux effets incalculables, tu ne t’en es jamais souciée, tu ne l'as jamais soupçonné. _(I cannot pretend to translate Fred Vargas, but for those who don't read French, it means grossly: you never cared, you never suspected about the peculiarities of each particular being.) I firmly believe that one of the keys to happiness is to be able to see the _saugrenu_ (the peculiarities) in every thing and being at all times.

However...



Nun-Translator said:


> Do we use facile political labels to avoid looking into the face of suffering?


Yes. I would even say that it is vital. If you start considering the personal tragedy of every being... I think there's a limit to one's empathy. No one can bear the sufferance of the whole humanity. I've said something along these lines here.
The above quote continues as such: _Les autres ? Qu'est-ce que c'est, les autres ? Des broutilles, des myriades d'êtres insignifiants, une masse d'hommes négligeable. _(grossly: Others are but trifle, an insignificant pile of people.) It's easier when people suffering seem unreal.

However... (encore)
The least one can do is to show the minimum level of empathy - decency. The decency of not throwing one's comfortable labelling into the face of the labelled sufferers. One can choose to ignore people's sufferance, but one cannot deny that sufferance exists.


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## Etcetera

Isn't it quite the same within a single nation?
If something bad happens in our family, we are all concern. If something happens to a close friend's family, we are ready to offer him our sympathy and all the help we're able to provide. If it's just a neighbour, we're less enthusiastic about sympathising. If it's someone we learn about from a news report... 
I wholeheartedly agree with Geve that it's impossible to consider the personal tragedy of every human being. 
But tragedy remains tragedy. It doesn't matter who suffer - a Palestinian or an Israeli. Maybe things are viewed differently by those who has lost their dears to war...


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## maxiogee

Nun-Translator said:


> OK, why is this not political discussion? Because I am very concerned that we no longer see people, but Peoples. We no longer see individuals in pain, but causes and counter-causes. We no longer hear sobbing because we are fascinated by the gory images. What has happened to us? I am very afraid that we are all losing something very important to our being human.
> 
> .


 
I think we have possibly become inured to the 'excessive'. Almost daily in our media we see
... the mangled bodies of road-crash victims, 
... the wreckage of a plane crash floating in the sea,
... the blood-stains on a street after a killing,
... the contorted faces of the violent in a mob/riot,

and we get to hear
... the last words of people about to die in a terrorist incident,
... the grief-stricken relatives of a dead person being hounded by reporters for "a few comments please"
... the lying platitudes of politicians who tell us that we've never had it so good, while all around us (in whatever country) there are hungry and impoverished people who cannot pay for medicine

After a while there is an excess of empathy and we can now longer feel compassion for our fellows - sometimes there are just so many of them who deserve it, or the media highlight the few so often that we can no longer raise any anger about their plight.

There are also so many calls upon our charity nowadays. The 'chuggers' (charity muggers) who accost one on the street to seek donations, subscriptions and other forms of cash are a continually growing impedence to going about one's business. Hardly a week goes by in Ireland (a tiny country) but we have one or other of the main international aid agencies on the news telling us how urgent some dire humanitarian situation overseas is becoming and how we need to lobby our government/other governments to act.

There's a limit. There really is.


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## Veggy

Thank you Nun-Translator, the subject is very interesting. I feel exactly what you explained so well, but I'm afraid I have more questions than answers. I notice too that many people seem to live in a sort of emotional apathy. Is it because there is too much of wars, violence, blood, killings on tv and newspapers every day? Is it because those events are rarely close to us, thus being far away they do not touch us? I've been searching for answers which I do not know if I'll ever reach. 
Many do not see nor consider people as individuals only as groups. Individuals have no importance at all nowadays, exept very few. In Italy we talked and heard for weeks about one journalist but we do not even know how many Iraqis have been killed since the war started : 600, 700 or 800.000 ? letting alone knowing WHO they are. 
I notice that when people are desparate because they lost someone they love because of a bomb or an accident, the expression on their faces is the same whatever nation they belong, whatever age they are, men and women alike. This makes me beleive that suffering is felt in the same way everywhere.


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## Outsider

Nun-Translator said:


> OK, why is this not political discussion? Because I am very concerned that we no longer see people, but Peoples. We no longer see individuals in pain, but causes and counter-causes. We no longer hear sobbing because we are fascinated by the gory images. What has happened to us? I am very afraid that we are all losing something very important to our being human.
> 
> Yes, this is a bit of a rant, but also an issue I'd like see discussed. Have we become desensitized to suffering? Do we use facile political labels to avoid looking into the face of suffering? Are we willing consumers of information and image overload because in a weird, perverse way it makes things easier on us?


It has always been that way. Only "we" count; the enemy is subhuman. If anything, I see a trend towards seeing enemies more as individuals nowadays than there has been before.


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Outsider said:


> It has always been that way. Only "we" count; the enemy is subhuman. If anything, I see a trend towards seeing enemies more as individuals nowadays than there has been before.


I concur with that. I think we tend to feel more concerned about others suffering than before (and not the opposite), precisely because we are now more aware of world news (even if they are still partial...). I don't think seeing horrors on tv every day make us less sensitive (well... I've no TV, but even though!). 

As for people involved into any conflict, I think if between the two "sides", one side is beginning to see the other like a real human being and not like a devil, this side would surely lose this war. So becoming desensitized to any others suffering is a sort of protection or a sort of guarantee at least to not lose too quickly in this case. 
It makes me think about this wonderful film "Das leben der anderen" ("The lives of others" -- yes again! run and watch it: it's worth it!  ) by  Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck: _<the white ink here is for those who don't want to read one of the subjects of this movie>_ This shows how a powerful officer from the Stasi (the secret police of East Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall), convinced about his dogma, can turn into an opponent of his own system almost without his will, merely by seeing those he was suposed to watch as living human beings.
I guess things could change only that way: trying to get the others point of view and not sticking to our own dogma.
 
As for the psychological process that makes some people not involved into one conflict saying (roughly) that "suffering people deserve their misery", I think it's more comfortable for us (do I really write "us"? ) to think that. That way we can do nothing for them as we can argue those people even don't try themselves to get out of their own troubles... So no chance to feel any guiltiness either.

About the word "people", I do agree with geve: being able to see the peculiar of each individual beyond any nationality, sex, side, religion, dogma or whatever, is one of the key for avoiding generalization about a group of people, and hence, maybe to avoid conflict. (singing: «you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one!»  ) But I'm afraid the humankind seems to have a special ability to rank individuals into nice boxes (or groups). It's easier that way to try to understand complex things with some simplifications. I'm fighting against this "human" tendency myself, but it's hard to resist. 

(sorry if I'm a bit off-topic, I'm not sure I understood all the subtleties of what Nun-T has said...)


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## geve

KaRiNe_Fr said:


> About the word "people", I do agree with geve: being able to see the peculiar of each individual beyond any nationality, sex, side, religion, dogma or whatever, is one of the key for avoiding generalization about a group of people, and hence, maybe to avoid conflict.


I actually meant this in a more selfish way : seing the peculiarities of every thing is - in my opinion - one of the keys to *my* very own personal happiness. The days I remember to look people in the eyes instead of just handing the money for my sandwich, the days I notice how the roofs of the buildings neatly emerge on the blue sky, the days my mind stops on a word and takes time to enjoy its sonority - these are the days I feel closest to happiness. Happiness is a state of mind, isn't it?

And this is related to the thread topic, which is a good thing because I wouldn't want to get off-topic , and a bad one, because when you're open to the beauty surrounding you, you let the misery in more easily, too. I remember one of these days where I was smiling for no "good reason", and a homeless man got in my field of vision, tripping and carrying all his possessions in a dozen plastic bags. It saddened me more than if I had just been confined in my sphere of worries, indifferent to the rest of the world. Happiness is a dangerous state of mind.

Maybe my understanding of your question is farther from politics than you wished, in which case I apologize, dear Nun-T.


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## Nunty

I am actually very glad that most of the replies are staying far away from politics, in the usual sense of the word.

I think Geve is on to something when she talks about openness. Being open is being vulnerable. We let in beauty and ugliness, honor and shame, the highest and the basest. I think Maxiogee is also onto something when he distinctly sums up "There is a limit." I think everyone made really good points.

There is one post that I do not understand. Outsider (and Karine), in what ways do you see a trend towards view enemies as other people, more than ever? I really have not noticed that.


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## cirrus

Interesting thread NT.  

  My take is that were we to start putting ourselves in other people's shoes so much conflict would change out of all recognition. Similarly many political positions would become completely unsustainable. Just imagine what would happen if people were to stop, start looking at each other in the eyes and saying neither of us want this situation, what can we do to make it better?  It would be nothing short of revolutionary.  

Just supposing we started from the position that we are humans and all have a basic need to be listened to.  This implies at some point we have to take turns in shutting up while someone says their piece, asking for clarification and thinking it over.  How different is this than the oft repeated mantra of we simply can't talk to them because they are (insert whatever dismissive adjective most appeals at the moment). 

Neither listening or imagining how others feel are that easy.  Being open to change isn’t either, particularly as this takes so much time to achieve.  All this requires courage, a willingness to stand up for the right to think and act differently and contemplate the possibility that you might have misunderstood something or been wrong.  Contemplating alternatives throws into question entrenched positions and the received opinions that goes with them.  Challenging established opinion can lead your peers to question your motives. None of these are moves which appear encouraged in soundbite dominated media or wider politics.


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## Veggy

Nun-Translator said:


> I am actually very glad that most of the replies are staying far away from politics, in the usual sense of the word.


 
It is not difficult, Nun-Translator, if one sees and considers human living beings. Though "politics" (which is not always negative) in a deep dimension is anyway present because it is governments or any authority felt as worth being followed to order their people to do what they do on a national or international plan.
This is where I perfectly understand your point when you say people not peoples. I'll add that when you do consider people as living human beings you are able to see clearly all that is common (there is a lot in common) while if you see unindividualistic groups, you have a tendency of focusing on differences therefore find adversaries or enemies which at the end represent a threat to your being different, from here you have to strike and destroy to protect yourself.


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Nun-Translator said:


> [...]Outsider (and Karine), in what ways do you see a trend towards view enemies as other people, more than ever? I really have not noticed that.


Blame my bad English again then...  I didn't mean especially enemies, but now at least we can "see" others suffering thanks to all of sorts of information media. When we didn't even see anything and know only few facts from conflict far abroad, how could we feel concerned and "see" them as other people? At least we don't have this excuse anymore now.
Hope this will clarify my thoughts.


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## Nunty

C'est "Cultura", ma chère. Tu peux écrire dans la langue qui te convient... mais ton anglais est bon et certainement mieux que mon français !

So Karine, if I understand correctly you are saying that the images of suffering don't make us indifferent but actually sensitize to the "other" as an individual?


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Nun-Translator said:


> C'est "Cultura", ma chère. Tu peux écrire dans la langue qui te convient... [...]


D'accord, mais alors nous serons seulement quelques un(e)s à nous comprendre.  Je n'ai d'ailleurs guère vu de fil intégrant des réponses en français dans ce forum-ci.
Et puis c'est un bon exercice pour moi d'essayer de m'exprimer en anglais, même si ça me fait aussi toucher du doigt mes lacunes. 


Nun-Translator said:


> So Karine, if I understand correctly you are saying that the images of suffering don't make us indifferent but actually sensitize to the "other" as an individual?


Correct. Don't you think seing the "face" of the other is a good start to becoming sensitized about them?
At the opposite, with weapons technological "enhancements", when you are sending bombs to only "targets" with so called "surgical" strikes behind the computer of a plane pressing a button like in video games, I don't think you can really care of the other...


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## Outsider

Nun-Translator said:


> There is one post that I do not understand. Outsider (and Karine), in what ways do you see a trend towards view enemies as other people, more than ever? I really have not noticed that.


Before the war in Iraq started (to pick an example that is fresh in everyone's memories), there were Americans who opposed it, protested publically against it, and even a few who went to Iraq themselves, as a form of protest.

None of this happened when the Vietnam war started. There were no protests then, no opposition, and certainly no gestures of "placing yourself in the enemy's shoes".

Go back in time a hundred or two hundred years, and you will see that sympathy for enemies was even more scarce.


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## Athaulf

Outsider said:


> Before the war in Iraq started (to pick an example that is fresh in everyone's memories), there were Americans who opposed it, protested publically against it, and even a few who went to Iraq themselves, as a form of protest.
> 
> None of this happened when the Vietnam war started. There were no protests then, no opposition, and certainly no gestures of "placing yourself in the enemy's shoes".
> 
> Go back in time a hundred or two hundred years, and you will see that sympathy for enemies was even more scarce.



I'm not really sure that things have really been so linear. The Vietnam war didn't start at one precise moment like the Iraq war did, but once it built up to a significant conflict, there was certainly a lot of "placing oneself in the enemy's shoes," which actually went to ridiculous extremes unseen today (just remember the "Hanoi Jane"). In World War 1, there was a very strong opposition to the U.S. entering the war, which had to be crushed using quite extreme, nearly totalitarian police state measures. In both these cases, it seems to me like the opposition to the war was actually far greater than nowadays. 

In World War 2, the entry into the war was totally infeasible politically all until the Japanese attacked the American soil. And if you return several centuries in the past, back then there was nothing resembling the nationalist hysteria of modern times -- the only significant zeal was religious -- and there was nothing comparable to the modern total war, where all persons in the whole population of the warring states are considered (and consider themselves) as a part of the war effort and clearly sided with one of the parties in the conflict.


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## Outsider

I'm sure that things have not been linear. However, you are speaking of support for a war before it is proposed, whereas I was speaking of active opposition to a war shortly before, or after, it has been declared.

The American public was not too keen on going to war in WWI or WWII, which was quite understandable: it was a war in Europe which did not threaten them. It was not their fault that Europeans had lost their minds.

However, once the war was declared, they obediently fought in it, and there was little civil opposition to it. Furthermore, I don't think the American public heard or cared much about atrocities their troops might possibly have committed in Europe. Not so in Vietnam. 

But the American public was still largely apathetic about the Vietnam war, in its first years. The participation of the US in the war escalated in the early sixties, but opposition to the war didn't really start to build up until the later years of that decade. Compare that with Iraq II, four years down the line.


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## elroy

There is a human tendency to attempt to explain and rationalize the grotesque, the preposterous, the unfathomable.  I am not surprised that outsiders who listened to your stories, N-T, immediately offered "logical" political or social explanations for the suffering you described to them.  I am in full agreement with you that this dehumanizes the victims of the tragedy by focusing our attention on the alleged causes and not on the effects. 

Of course, I am not against such academic musings, particularly because an understanding of the cause of tragedy brings us closer to eliminating it.  However, such reflections should not blind us to the horror of the calamity.  We can try to explain injustice and suffering, but we should also keep in mind that our world is just plain "messed up": there are terrible things going on out there that aren't necessarily easy to explain.  When we hear about such things, sometimes we need to just leave it at that, accepting our inability to explain the unexplainable.


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## Nunty

Thank you for bringing us back on track, Elroy. Yes, that is the point I was trying to make: that focusing on possible causes of suffering dehumanizes the people who are bearing it.

I am interested in the way that this thread seemed to slide almost naturally into the related topic of people protesting or reacting to their government's decisions. What if we take this out of the range of armed conflict (that is the right euphemism, isn't it?) and talk about natural disaster. When we see the images of the tsunami and read about the thousands of victims. Even there, I've found, people tend to look at causes (end times tribulations, if they have that sort of religious tendency; ecological effects of development, maybe, in other cases) -- but not to dare to look into the face of the people.

I don't think I'll ever forget the flat, bald statement I heard from someone who was in the New Orleans flood. "I was on the roof, holding my two children. I couldn't keep them both alive. I let go of one of them."

What can we possible say to that? How can we react? Such suffering that "suffering" seems too small and banal a term. I couldn't look her in the eye. I am ashamed of myself, but I was unable to "contain" that within me. As awful as they may be, I find it easier to look at the images of destruction, but not at the people whose lives have been destroyed.


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## geve

There might be something about the way the information gets to us, too. If you're in your car and hear on the radio that there's an accident ahead that slows down traffic, you'll probably think something like "shoot, as if that drive wasn't long enough"; maybe you'll have a fugitive thought for the people involved in the accident. If the radio announced the names of the persons involved in the car accident and told a few things about their lives and hopes and personalities, this might affect you differently... 
And would it be such a good idea to have people devastated when they're driving? 
And wouldn't the journalists be accused of sensationalism?


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## Athaulf

Outsider said:


> I'm sure that things have not been linear. However, you are speaking of support for a war before it is proposed, whereas I was speaking of active opposition to a war shortly before, or after, it has been declared.
> 
> The American public was not too keen on going to war in WWI or WWII, which was quite understandable: it was a war in Europe which did not threaten them. It was not their fault that Europeans had lost their minds.
> 
> However, once the war was declared, they obediently fought in it, and there was little civil opposition to it. Furthermore, I don't think the American public heard or cared much about atrocities their troops might possibly have committed in Europe. Not so in Vietnam.



In WW1, there a was a lot of strong opposition throughout the war, and as I've mentioned above, this opposition was crushed by Wilson's administration using ruthless police state methods. Speaking against the war was criminalized to the extent that people were jailed and given draconian penalties merely for advocating opposition to the war through the regular political process. The 1917 Espionage Act was the first extremely repressive step in this direction; when it turned out that even this wasn't enough, it was supplemented by the even more extreme 1918 Sedition Act,  which completely abolished the freedom of speech in matters pertaining to the war and criminalized the criticism of government in many other matters, too. It seems to me that the opposition that required such extreme methods to crush must have been very strong.

If we go further back to the Civil War, the level of public discontent with the war was even higher back then. Compared to the the anti-draft protests of those years, those during the Vietnam War look like a joke. Back then, the war was still widely viewed as an affair of the government outside of the interest of the common people, as long as their homes weren't directly endangered -- an attitude unimaginable in the later conflicts driven by ideology and nationalism. 

Overall, I would say that the phenomenon of total war, where the vast majority of the population are successfully indoctrinated into obediently playing their parts in the war machine and viewing the enemy as utterly inhuman, had a very sharp peak in the last century at the time of WW2.


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## .   1

Nun-Translator said:


> Have we become desensitized to suffering?


It is our only defence to a daily diet of gore. The world is full of random acts of kindness and senseless beauty but a flower will not kill us so we don't have to create stories and boogy men to protect us from flowers.
We are surrounded by flowers but the gore gets our attention.

*JUST HANGING AROUND*​ 
Lost youth I did not know you yet you came into my life
I was there you could not feel me
eyes unseeing lips unbreathing heart unbeating tears not there
Fell to places dank not tranquil left a world of endless strife
you were there did you not see it
eyes unblinking lips are bluing hearts so cold all fear left here​ 
*If you could now would you tell me where you went and what you saw*
*I was there I could not see it*
*eyes unknowing my lips touched yours hearts not beating fears fell there*​ 
Take my breath to struggle back home world of silent pain alone
neither there nor really here dear
eyes uncrying lips moist drying hearts so cold all fears right here
Lost youth you never knew me I just gave you of my life
we were there I could not find you
eyes re-searching lips rebreathing hearts now cold my tears for us ​ 

*If you could now would you tell me where you went and what you saw*
*I was there I could not see it*
*eyes unknowing my lips touched yours heart just beating fears fell there*​ 
*If you could now would you tell me where you went and what you saw*
*I was there I could not see it*
*eyes unknowing my lips touched yours hearts just beating fears fall here*​ 
youth lost love lost youth​


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## Veggy

I wonder if the quantity of violence that we see each day -there's really too much of it- brings us to be desensitized. We might turn our head the other way because it is just too much but this does not mean we have lost sensitivity, on the contrary it could mean we cannot look anymore _because_ we ARE sensitive.
.,, could you tell us who wrote those beautiful lines you posted? Thanks


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## .   1

Veggy said:


> .,, could you tell us who wrote those beautiful lines you posted? Thanks


I did.
I had to write it about the day I almost touched a person's soul.
To see a person stripped bare of all defences and requiring every assistance is to touch humanity.

.,,
Where lips touch life flows


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