Glaub, was wahr ist; Lieb, was rar ist; Trink, was klar ist”
“Believe what is true; love what is rare; drink what is clear”.
My reaction: This could be comfortably folded into a list of Epicurean beliefs.
Would the military support the Constitution?
Fewer than 1 percent of the population currently serve in uniform, and 7 percent are military veterans. The number of Gold Star families — the term for those who lost a family member to combat — is about 7,000 from Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a discussion among military families, veterans and scholars that begins with a basic premise — that civil society and military circles are culturally, socially and geographically distinct, a form of isolation with real consequences for the country.
“The last 20 years of the everlasting wars have been carried by a narrow slice of the population, and the burden is heavy but not wide,” said Phil Carter, a former Army officer and director of the military, veterans and society program at Center for a New American Security, a think tank. Carter said that Kelly’s comments echo a prevalent attitude in some military and veteran circles — a feeling of pride for taking on a tough job in some of the most dangerous places on Earth, coupled with a simmering resentment of civilians oblivious to their mission.
Geography heightens the separation. Military families and veterans tend to be linked to military installations that populate the South and Midwest, turning those populations inward and away from the coasts, and recruitment often draws on those who already have military ties, making service in uniform a family business of sorts.
Analysts were taken aback by remarks by former House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly suggesting that discourse about those killed in action can only reasonably occur in the walled-off segments of society where losses on the battlefield are most directly and painfully felt.
“Veterans feel very keenly that America is disengaged from these wars. The problem is not going to be fixed with the idea that only people who are personally involved have the right to ask questions,” Klay said. “It’s the exact opposite.”
The notion of military service as the purest form of public virtue, at the cost of other kinds of service to others, is an alarming development, he said.
“Military courage is something society needs to have and we need to valorize it,” Klay said. “But we also need a civic body that makes this a country worth fighting for.”
In particular, Klay said, the politicized discourse around service, and who understands its burdens, obscures legitimate questions that all citizens need to engage with, beginning, in this moment, with why U.S. forces were in Afghanistan, for instance, in the first place. (The Guardian)
My comment: members of the military have to weigh their loyalty to the Constitution and orders from above against the pro-Trump, pro-gun and anti-democrat views of those (mainly in the South and Center of the center of the country) around them. Will there be another attempted coup, and if so , will the rank and file and the service retirees defend the status quo? These are the ex-fighters, trained to use sophisticated weapons. I don’t know the answer, but feel uneasy about the current and retired military rank and file.
Connection with Epicurus? Peace of mind!
Aliens are watching us?
Aliens will arrive on Earth after studying us for years.
Uri Geller has claimed that extraterrestrial contact is imminent and aliens have been studying us for years. The 74-year-old said aliens will arrive during something akin to a “Steven Spielberg production”, possibly on the grounds of the White House. Speaking to The Sun ”newspaper” the self-declared psychic said: “I think they are studying us. I don’t know what they really want.” (The Week 14 Dec 2021)
My comment: The aliens are very welcome! I volunteer to give them a tour of China, Russia and assorted African dictatorships, completing the tour with a week in attendance during a session of the US House of Representatives. I will cap it by taking them to a rally addressed by former President Trump. After such a series of educational visits I can assure the reader that we will never hear from them again.
Elephants evolving without tusks
Poachers killed so many elephants for their ivory during the 1977-1992 Mozambican civil war that elephants rapidly evolved to be naturally tuskless. Male and female elephants usually have tusks, but a few are born without. Because so many of the species were killed during the war the tuskless were much more likely to pass on their genes. Researchers have found that the proportion of tuskless females rose from 19% to 51% during the conflict.
They also found that the genetic mutation for tusklessness is lethal to males, and that those who have it die, sometimes before birth. The speed at which this happened shocked experts. Although the loss of tusks may stop females being poached, it denies them a tool used to strip bark off a tree for food, dig holes for water, and defend themselves. (Source: Shane Campbell-Staton, lead author of report in New Scientist)
My comment: And all for the sake of carved ornaments for well-off Chinese.
Declining births: is civilisation going to crumble?
Speaking at a corporate event last week, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk lamented that too many “good, smart people” were worried about the global population growing out of control.
The real problem, he insisted, was quite the opposite: “There are not enough people. I can’t emphasise this enough, there are not enough people.” “Please look at the numbers,” he told the business audience – “if people don’t have more children, civilisation is going to crumble, mark my words.”
At first glance, the numbers don’t really support Musk’s argument, In the past 200 years, the global population has multiplied from one billion to almost eight billion, and it’s expected to keep growing until the end of this century, when it’s projected to reach almost 11 billion. But those figures mask a very uneven picture.
Many parts of the world, including swathes of Europe, are indeed facing a “population bust”. Romania, for instance, is set to go from around 20 million people today to just 12 million by 2100. Over the same period, Italy’s population is set to shrink by a third.
Longer life expectancy and immigration are currently “topping up the head-count” in many countries, but these compensating factors won’t always make up for birth rates that are way below the replacement level of 2.1 babies per woman. In nations such as South Korea, birth rates are less than half that. Musk has a point.
Fertility rates have been falling in the West for a long time but the “pace of change seems to be accelerating” as other nations follow the same path. Birth rates in all four “BRIC” emerging market economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are now below replacement level. “The world’s fertility rate, which stood at 3.5 births per woman in the mid-1980s, fell to just 2.4 in 2019. This demographic transition will generate some economic challenges as the world’s population ages, but also some benefits. It will, for one thing, make the task of cutting carbon emissions “less daunting”.
Whatever happens, there’s little the “pro-natalists” can do to stop the trend “short of building a new Gilead”. The reality is that as female education improves, birth rates drop. In advanced economies, most people can’t afford to have big families. We’ll have to leave it to wealthy altruists such as Musk, with his six children, and Boris Johnson, whose seventh child arrived recently, to save civilisation. (The Economist, Harry de Quetteville, The Daily Telegraph, and Catherine Bennett,The Observer. all edited for length, 18 Dec 2021).
My opinion: We need fewer people and more and better education. A growing population may have made corporations more money, but it has not improved the lives of people anywhere. And forcing women to have children they don’t want is inhumane toward all involved.