News

A frightened pragmatist Table 3: Bill Agnew This…

21 November 2008 · Kenneth Roy

A frightened pragmatist
Table 3: Bill Agnew

This is not the view of a philosopher. More a rather frightened pragmatist.
     When disaster strikes, it is usually after warning signs. Sometimes long before – sometimes only seconds. Often survival depends on taking the right action at the right time. When the avalanche starts to move, there may still be time to move out of its way, but to run or ski down in front of it is likely to be fatal. To respond with instinct has a chance of success – to fight, flight, freeze are strategies evolved by tigers, antelopes, hares. Not so useful for the range of dangers facing humanity.
     Survival is more likely if the warning is considered and a good response chosen. The advanced human brain, our enormous control of power, the revolutionary and astonishing ability to communicate planet wide – the human race can survive if it uses a different evolved survival technique, working together as one pack.
     Life will not be easy, or ever the same as before this period, whatever we do. We are not facing one disaster, or two. A few months ago I was writing about the oil disaster. Before and after that – climate change. Now we have the money mess. How do we rate in survival strategy? Headless chickens?
     Trying to fix the money mess may be made more difficult by the fuel, biofuel and food messes. Not to mention the habit of governments to think that ‘defence of the realm’ means arms, which in manufacture and use are planet-killers.
     Every war has been lost by both ‘winner’ and ‘loser’, but this time, the casualty will be life.
     Our human desire to hide from disaster may be a normal response, but climate change alone is more than one. Many more than ‘four horsemen of the apocalypse’. War, Floods, Storms, Famine, Plague. Add Corruption and Greed! Corruption seems more widespread, more acknowledged, and more tolerated than in the past. The money economy which depended on integrity and ‘my word is my bond’ has evolved into ‘greed is good’. The fantasy that anything and anyone can be bought is rife – we can ‘buy and sell’ carbon credits? With what currency – lungs?
     So, we ‘live in interesting times’. Yet there are opportunities for hope. There is real disgust at violence; there are serious improvements in medicine; technology and science advance with amazing promise, from GM crops to nanotechnology to the behavioural sciences. Even the politicians are talking – if we can only get them to talk human sense, not vote-catching self-interest. Human sense surely puts human survival first.
     The question we have is: ‘How can we manage to prevent the disasters and accelerate the benefits?’ It is too late to stop all the disasters, but alleviate, minimise, save the human race. Could it be done?
     The answers have to come through action, and action which is focused. The beginning of the First World War (Robins Millar’s Diary, SR 43) shows that speedy and focused action was possible even in those days. Today, individuals can do their little bit (drive at an economical speed), but for big things to happen, big things have to be done (rationing!).
     Leadership needs big people, big vision. Faced with crisis, we little people respond with energy, courage, loyalty. We’ve done it before – in the First and Second World Wars, in the cause of freedom. A great cause – but the survival of the human race is greater. There is no doubt about the little people. What about the leadership?

Table 1
Arthur J Bell:
No German lessons here
[click here]

Table 2
Dr Chris Holligan:
Child-friendly
[click here]

Table 3
Bill Agnew:
A frightened pragmatist
[click here]

WEEKEND
INBOX

THE ROAD TO GLENROTHES

Part II