I respect Brecht and deeply admire Shelley; but for wisdom in these matters give me good old Dr Johnson:
"How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part that laws or kings can cause or cure."
To which I responded:
@PL: Johnson was a pompous windbag.
He knew next to nothing about the human heart.
Just ask any slave (white, black, plantation, galley, salt mine); any starving, HIV-infected kid, any addict or convict from the ghettos of the richest country on earth; any crippled victim of landmines, bombs (working, unexploded, napalm, cluster, vacuum, sophisticated or improvized), snipers, flame-throwers, or gas attacks (military or civil); any indentured child labourer; any mega-city slum-dweller drinking sewage; any farmers thrown off their land by debt, violence, or ecological terrorism (dam projects, monoculture, man-made environmental disasters); any victim of flogging, keel-hauling, blinding, legal amputation; or any girl or woman violated, brutalized and broken by the sex industry.
Shall I go go on? There's more. And these are only the "lucky" ones still alive.
And take no account of lives stunted and emptied by the anxiety, frustration, stress, and illness of "privileged" societies. Or lack of educational opportunities like those Mary is fighting to preserve and generalize.
Johnson was a pompous windbag.
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