Insults to Mankind
First the good news. I like to think that the crows had an easier time this winter with my spreading wild bird food over the snow. Judging by the feeding frenzy in the space between Chestnut tree 211 and Chestnut tree 213, where I spread the food, I would say that they were thankful.
Christl recently found an interesting article in Die Welt. We find it to be a German equivalent of the New York Times newspaper. The article is an interview with a German immunologist, who’s recent book is called Hotspot included a medical view as well as a philosophical view. Hendrik Streeck said: “The fact that we think we could completely control such a virus is problematic. What we are currently experiencing could be called the fourth insult of humanity. Freud enumerated three insults: the one caused by Copernicus, who found that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Then that of Darwin, who showed that humans and apes have a common ancestor. And the one through psychoanalysis, which found that we sometimes act instinctively. That we cannot eradicate something as small as this virus in the foreseeable future a comparable insult.”
He went on to say “Yes, I am definitely optimistic about summer. And for long-term development too.” Why, the interviewer asked Streeck? “Because I don’t want to imagine anything else.”
I also read the latest book by Anne Applebaum, called Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. She is a frequent guest of Fareed Zachria’s TV news show, Global Public Square on CNN, which we also watch regularly. She was born in Washington, DC. She writes for the Atlantic and the Washington Post.
In the book Appelbaum starts with a party she gave with her husband in Poland “. . . a party to celebrate the end of one millennium and the start of a new one, and people very much wanted to celebrate . . . Nearly two decades later, I would now cross the street to avoid some of the people who were at my New Year’s Eve party. They, in turn, would not only refuse to enter my house, they would be embarrassed to admit they had ever been seen there. In fact, about half the people who were at the party would no longer speak to the other half. Poland is now one of the most polarized societies in Europe, and we have found ourselves on opposite sides of a profound divide, one that runs through not only what used to be the Polish right but also the old Hungarian right, the Spanish right, the French right, the Italian right, the Spanish right, with some differences, the British right, and the American right, too.”
The connection between the Streeck and Appelbaum books that comes to mind is vaccination nationalism. Is that another human insult? The millennium party in Poland reminded me of our Millennium Odyssey party in Cape Town, South Africa, which Christl and I both attended. Our party turned into a successful circumnavigation of the globe on a sailboat and no insults and no right or left politics but a lot of talk about “Y2K.”
