I read a number of newspapers (online) every day and have for years. You may well do it too. If you do, you'll have noticed that a majority, if not all of the articles, relate to situations we as individuals can't do anything about. Yes, we can vote every two years, donate money (if we have it) to candidates or parties, or actually become activists and devote a lot of our time to particular issues and/or particular elections.

But we here at PC have an awful lot of personal things on our plates. And it seems hard for many (certainly including me) to stay balanced among all the competing psychological problems and normal workaday and family issues and situations everyone has to deal with. Does it make sense for us to get upset about outside-world issues we can't really affect?

I can't do much more than vote or write letters or sign petitions when it comes to any elections, local, state or federal. Don't have the money to donate. I can't affect any of the great financial issues facing the country, again other than signing petitions and writing letters. And as for the global issues! The Greek situation, the riots in England, the war in Libya, the global warming thing, I mean, do I even really have to read the articles about those things?

Each of us has limited energy and attention, particularly as members of PC, with our backgrounds of all kinds of personal troubles. Should we really permit ourselves to deplete our own energy reserves by being sucked into all these issues about which we're reasonably powerless? Right now, I'm tending to think not. It's beginning to seem to me to be just a waste of limited resources. Is such an attitude unpatriotic? Not being a good citizen? What do you think?