Yes, we have to have courage and stamina in this chaotic changing world. How can we elevate reason above ignorance, myth, bigotry and hate? It's all so wrong, the brutality, the lust for power, the stark injustices inflicted upon the innocent. So much is soured by resentment and loathing. It's such a sad terrible thing, isn't it? Because the consequences of it go on and the finality ... echoes. I have no answer to monstrous and calculated evil. Human life can call forth such horror. The world has become steadily a more, not less, violent place. Must every page in history be written in blood? Passions grow swiftly when doused in a rich rain of blood in the furnace of war.

What thoughts have I? Oh, God! Elusiveness becomes clogged by the stupidity of human nature. If we teeter on the brink long enough, eventually we're bound to fall in. History accumulates disasters and how quickly we forget. I suspect you are writing of the irrelevance of the world, where men squabble and boast and tyrannise. I was intrigued by the world view behind your comments. I am not myself exactly complacent about our modern industrial civilisation. We practice excess, excess in everything. It is a hard world as you say, but will it ever become less hard? The awful indulgences of society change from era to era. If mankind was indestructively good, the world would be a better place. We have only a vague conception of the horror and devastation of war. Emotions boil up which can so easily wreck a city, a country, a world and I am haunted by what is happening today. I think it is easy to forget how violently mankind can react. No one can live on hatred alone. Love and hate walk hand in hand. I doubt whether we can fully experience the one without knowing the other or that one flaring brightly, will not engender its counterpart as inevitably as the sun casts shadows.

The world continues to fall apart, its social fabric is in tatters, its eco-system near collapse. I have come to know and fear so much through the pictures. I wish every person could experience one day and night of the pictures. They would open unseeing and uncaring eyes and tightly closed minds. Nothing is permanent, everything changes. The world beyond is specious and temporary. Anyone with their eyes open can see the dangers that lie ahead. Critics abstain from saying or writing what would make an enemy or wreck a sacred scheme? We are forced into ambiguity, or, in pursuit of some collective advantage, silence. Look at what is happening in the USA today. McCarthyism has returned and people are being hounded.

You tell me it's no good being pure and agnostic and that you doubt an enemy would drop his arms and embrace our way of thinking. You also write of justice. All justice is partial. One knows the rules, one applies the rules, but one applies them according to secret bias. You draw an insidious parallel. For my part, I long ago became content to live along with my feelings and judgements, but I recognise that life shifts as desires are contained and released and that situations do not remain stable. You have written of faith, but faith is something through which justice prevails and evil perishes and from which miracles might be expected.