The Guardian (September 21st) reports that twice as many girls as boys are being born in some Arctic villages because of high levels of man-made chemicals that mimic human hormones. The chemicals are carried in in the mother’s bloodstream through the placenta to the feotus, switching hormones to create girls. These chemicals are accumulating in the food chain. Seals, whales and polar bears are getting doses a million times higher than ever existed in plankton, and these creatures are then eaten by humans. In the US and Japan, since 1970, there has been a 250,000 shortfall in the birth of boys than would normally be expected. Chemicals used in electrical equipment – -generators, TVs, computers — are the suspects.
It beats me what you can do about this, since no one is about to give up his/her TVs and computers. But maybe moderate, modest, non-greedy, thoughtful Epicureans can make a contribution by stopping being mindless consumers, if such they are.
In the back of my office I am looking at a pile of electronic gear which is old or superceded and which has been there for a year at least. There is a desktop computer, a very old laptop, a clutch of old batteries, a telephone and so on. Every few days I look at it and regret that I haven’t disposed of it yet.
Then the image of all those little kids in Bangla Desh comes to mind – there they are clambering over huge mounds of junk, shipped from the US and Europe and dumped for “disposal” in poor, benighted Bangla Desh, where people scrape a living recovering noxious chemicals, compounds, metals and rare earths etc. How can I think of adding to all that?
The hard, cruel people of the world will say, “But it gives them a job.” (at a dollar a day!) A thoughtful Epicurean, however, will conclude that we are soiling the very earth we depend upon and the very air we breathe, and that the hard capitalists are gradually choking us all to death. Well done, chaps! clever one!
I think you have “Epicurian” confused with “whiny, granola munching, tree-hugging, ignorant lefty/hippy whacko’s”.
Rather a tree-hugger than a warmonger. There are too many people calling themselves “Epicureans” with violent inclinations.
Read Epicurus. He was not violent
We have no idea how “violent” Epicurus was, since you seem to define all actions of self-defense as “violent”. You see what you want to see. Epicurus was dead set against that. Epicurus was a realist. Amd, by the way, did not believe in public property.
1. In what way, for instance, was the war on Iraq ever a matter of self-defense?
2. Not sure where you have found the evidence that Epicurus did not believe in public property. I cannot remember any reference to it, but you may be right.
Unfortunately, times have changed. We are not living 2,600 years ago, and have to be careful not to be like the extreme religious people and have our views and beliefs stuck in almost pre-history (not quite, but ancient history anyway).
1. It’s a matter of vision. If you only attack the country that attacked you, but leave his friends alone, that’s one way of doing it. It’s not the American way. We are much more proactive, and much more inclined to do absoloutly everything possible to prevent another occurance. Or to be short, it’s called WINNING, as opposed to Britains performance in the Second World War, which we call LOSING.
2.The garden was held in private. The custom in the other houses of philosophy was to hold property in public, shared among the members. For reasons unknown, Epicurus did it this way.