You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
We would be doing the children of South Asia a great disservice if we allowed ourselves to believe that the need of children to belong to a loving, permanent family was washed away by the waves of the tsunami.
Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles.