Just because someone can't find empathy for an unhappy rich girl doesn't make them jealous. She (and really the majority of us living in the USA) are lucky compared to most of the world's inhabitants. Keeping this in mind is a real, constructive way to put our own problems in perspective.

My own experience with those who don't have to work for a living is that they either see how lucky they are and attempt to do something meaningful with their lives, or they fall into a funk of self-involvement.

Remember, only the permanently wealthy don't know the heartbreak of not being able to get out of a lousy situation and follow your dreams because you're too busy trying to make ends meet.

Dear Stunning Heiress,

You don’t need to work and yet you love your job? No matter what happens, you’ll never go hungry or homeless? Your letter reminds me of the song “Common People” by William Shatner.

OK, so the boyfriend isn’t working out, your dad died young, and there’s that ugly nicotine addiction. So what? Dump the boyfriend, get a little counseling, and have your overpaid doctor write a prescription for some Wellbutrin and the patch.

You need some perspective. You need to realize how lucky you are. The vast majority of the world is just going to be happy to go to bed tonight having survived another day. Disease, hunger, and war are killing innocent people by the truckload right now .

How about trying to volunteer some of your time to a good cause? Resist the temptation to do fundraisers for MOMA. Instead, do actual work. Serve food at a homeless shelter, work some shifts at a battered women’s shelter, or help build houses with Habitat. This will give you the perspective you need and your life some real meaning.

Good luck!

I live in NM. I've been to Farmington and the big res. I know people in both places.

The attitude of many (though not all) long-time white Farmington residents is that the Navajos are lazy drunks, living on hand outs from the federal government. Some of these folks pity the Navajo for this misconception, while others hate them for it.

Its true that the white Farmington locals only see the worst of the Navajo. However, that's no excuse for racism and hate crimes. Additionally, most of this bad behavior has its origins in the awful, awful history of the white's domination and subjugation of the Native Americans.

Personally, I think this article is mostly correct. Thanks to Salon.com for publishing it.

Normally, I am an advocate of counseling. However, I think in this case, the counseling is failing the LW. The LW only seems to be able to see this issue as something that affects her own life. She seems to lack empathy for anyone else’s viewpoint.

She needs to put this in perspective. A man, with a wife and children, has been diagnosed with a fatal illness. He is undergoing chemotherapy that, despite many advances, is rather unpleasant. In all likelihood, this difficult treatment will eventually fail. He will die, his death will not be easy, and he knows it.

The LW is considering having a discussion with this dying man about how 1.) he wasn’t there for her when their father died 50 years ago, and 2.) why he isn’t willing to discuss the effect of his own future death on her psyche. Eeeek!

I think the LW should deal with her issues on her own and attempt to make her brother’s last months as happy as she can.

"It may be that for him the best thing to do is to sacrifice his own happiness in order to live by his code. It's not for us to say."

What if the friend was female and her husband was the abuser? Would the advice be the same? Probably not. There is no good reason to stay in an abusive marrage.

Any idealogy or religion that tells someone to stay in an abusive relationship is just part of the abuse. The idea that someone is supposed to accept abuse in a relationship for some abstract greater good is bullshit.

No one claims that science is perfect. However, the goal of science is to learn the factual truth about matters. On the other hand, the goal of religion is to advance a set of beliefs that are based on blind faith. Science and religion are not on the same intellectual level.

Also, Hadongus argues that science can't be trusted because academic research is funded by industry. In fact, the government, mainly the relatively agenda-free National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, funds most academic science research today. Industrial funding is important in only a few fields, such as pharmaceutical development. In any case, the peer-reviewed literature system serves as an effective check on faulty or biased research. Hadongus seems to imply that academia has sold out to industry, which simply isn’t true.

I just want to say "bless you" for your kind treatment of an old sickly cat. A little salmon probably brought so much comfort to him.

I am not a religious person. To me, it all seems like a sales pitch for a time-share campground in West Virginia. However, if we are to be judged by God when we die, then one criterium will certainly be how we treated the least of us.