Are we teetering on the edge of an abyss of horror and anti-humanism as you say? Oh yes, I have more than a nodding acquaintance with the real world. The world that few see let alone experience. Yes, there is misery and suffering on earth. Human problems are complex but all the trouble in the world is human trouble. All the cruel and malicious indifference confronted has a human face and soul. We are at best indifferent and at worst wantonly cruel. We are shown the awful truth about the horror and absurdity of life. Human life can be stripped of meaning and human beings of dignity. Truth can often be ugly. Cruelty and aggression is a rooted human trait. It has shown itself everywhere. Bosnia, Rwanda, Israel, Lebanon. America - yes it can also have a respectable guise of a scientist inventing new horrific weaponry, in the civil servant planning the use of internment or the use of gas-ovens or the wanton slaughter of innocents or the judicial tortures carried out in prisons on the bodies of enemies throughout the world.

I often wonder how I am able to take the atrocious confusion of this world into my mind and give it back metamorphosed, transfigured with such simple words scribbled across a page! You ask me if the truth of life is unbearable? I stare at Man's instinct for cruelty and death, at his pain and pleasure and I not only feel infinite pity for what Man is, but I have an infinite respect for his efforts in living. Yes I have a loss of confidence in the future, in the continuance of our humanities and essential decencies. I also understand that when people try and make a better world for us to live in, mistakes will be made. If only we could learn from our mistakes!