To be responsive to the vulnerability of living beings and living systems is to become exposed to responsibility, and to the possibility of intense suffering as well as to the possibilities of serenity, joy and belonging... The seduction of comfort, if such there be, lies squarely here in a desire to avoid suffering. As self and place are interwoven for most of us, self-protection would require insulation from other living beings and from place itself. Self-protection would thus promote the fragmentations of modernity and while insulating us, would also leave us stranded in a hapless nowhere.