When I return to New York, I know I will be told that no one cares, or should care, about the problems of Tibet, with its 2 million people, when New York City, four times Tibet’s size, is deep in crisis. But I do not believe that New York’s very real problems (and for that matter the rest of the nation’s) means we must turn away from pressing human tragedies elsewhere. That process leads only one way—towards an ever-narrower definition of what is in one’s interests—geographically, ethnically, and so on. Will we all end up so self-absorbed that we have room in our lives for only ourselves?
Whither compassion?
