ABSTRACT
It is one of the defining characteristics of our time that humanly produced suffering vastly exceeds the ability or readiness to establish responsibility for it. Between the harms suffered-and especially in respect of suffering on a massive scale-and a finding of responsibility for it lie all sorts of diversionary mechanisms and tactics-in concepts and social practices-that work to make a connection between the two appear difficult, impossible or even nonsensical to establish. In all of this, the asymmetry between suffering and responsibility for its production has become entrenched, it has become routinised and so expected.
