Charles: I think that is the answer to the question of nihilism. It is the American, or rather middle class society (as this scourge is spreading across the world) that is nihilistic - and there is little anoyne, especially on this list, can do about that. The only question is whether we should play the role of the good traditional liberal housewife by "making it nice," covering the most crude aspects of that nihilism with cheerful chat abd bandaid solution - or perhaps emotionally detach ourselves from it, and like Camus's "stranger," look with stoic cool at its convoluted gyrations. If that stoic detachment looks nihilistic, it is only because it reflects the nihilism of decaying capitalist society, since being determines consciousness...
Catherine: this is neither selfish nor unethical - just as there is nothing selfish or unethical in detached observation of a wild animal stalking and then killing its prey. Intervening in such a situation to "save the poor bambi" would indeed be foolish and full of sentimental moralising.
It is NOT by my choice that I (and people like me) have been deprived of any influence on the way this society is engineered and run. Why pretending that we have a choice by claiming moral positions? Morality makes only sense when there is a meaningful choice -and there is no such choice that pays lip service to choice. The choice is dead, long live the choice!
Jeffrey: what is so outrageously repulsive and callous about showing emotional detachment toward the plight of the folks who chose to live in suburbs, whereas similar detachment toward the plight of the folks who "chose" to live in the streets became so commonplace that no one even notices it?
What is repulsive and outrageous to show detachment toward violence in the US, whereas there are among us those who see violence on a much largers scale as a legitimate means of achieving humanitarian objectives? (in fact, if this country were to pay "an eye for an eye" for the suffering its so called "elected representatives' inflicted on other peoples around the world, the same way the armchair bombers want to punish other countries - there would be no US-ers alive today).
wojtek