view from the 14th floor

yesterday as i looked out on the vast patchwork of tumbled ice chunks on the lake, each with its own angle of repose, i noticed a large boat out on the water, just beyond where the ice gave way to sheets of blackish still water.
sucks to be those guys, thought i. some chilly seafaring dudes out there.
Re-reading Baudrillard on the train. Not ready to talk about that yet.
But
a couple of days ago, riding the train, i noticed the wiry, quiet older gentleman in the window seat next to me was reading a book. In Latin. Not the Bible. A different book. A non-Bible book in Latin.
Impressed, I searched the man's face for clues as to his possible identity, and settled on Former Monk Or Priest. Who else knows enough Latin to READ A BOOK? A book that is NOT THE BIBLE? no one, i thought. Only Catholic former clergy would read Latin that well. Or so I thought.
Until the train arrived at this man's stop. He put the book away, straightened his jacket, and with no change in his facial expression, stood up beside me, a move which required me to either a)swing my legs to the aisle to allow him to pass or b)get up and let him out. Do you see where i'm going with this? HE DID NOT SAY "EXCUSE ME"!! Not even a grunt. No sense of responsibility in this man was engaged by my presence in the seat beside him. Bah. Are jerks even allowed to become priests? I have no idea. I privately excommunicated him myself.
Which brings me back to Baudrillard, and looking at the question of why NO ONE'S sense of personal responsibility is engaged by the messages bombarding us from the mass media: images of torture, bombings, rampant hunger, civil war, genocide. Occasionally something briefly does make it through to prompt individuals to act, but it takes a fucking TSUNAMI that kills off entire gene pools. more on this later.