Found this on Gawker.Com. Good stuff. If you’re a writer, think of it as “Why WRITE Fiction in a Bad World?”
And, yes, for all practical purposes there’s no reason for all of who write to be crying and feeling guilty because let’s face it. There’s nothing all that special about our planet’s current circumstances. Hasn’t it always been this way?

By MORTEN HØI JENSEN
n 1932, Samuel Beckett paid a visit to the Paris apartment of Walter Lowenfels, an American poet and member of the Communist Party. Sunk in a corner of the living room, looking like “a forest ranger in a Western,” Beckett listened forbearingly as Lowenfels lurched into passionate speech about the need for anonymity in the arts and the terrible material conditions of society. Increasingly frustrated by the silence of his guest, Lowenfels suddenly exclaimed: “You sit there saying nothing while the world is going to pieces. What do you want? What do you want to do?” To which Beckett offered the languid response: “Walter, all I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.”