The world community seems to be surprised by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Should it be? Isn’t the invasion just “more of the same” for a species with a history of exacerbating natural troubles with artificial ones? Didn’t Homer warn us of such human troubles when he had Zeus declare in the Iliad, “Man has only himself to blame if his miseries are worse than they ought to be.”
When I first considered writing about the human condition some 25 years ago, neither I nor anyone else had to strain to see the map of waxing troubles. It was all around us on a scale of 1:1 in the threats of epidemics and potential pandemics, such as the cholera outbreaks in Bangladesh (1991, about 9,000 deaths) and in Latin America (1991-93, 8,000 deaths), western Africa’s meningitis outbreak (1996, 10,000 deaths), and the potentially medieval-like, but short-lived, reappearance of the Bubonic and Pneumonic plagues in India (1994, 56 deaths). Trouble appeared also as natural disasters, such as the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone (138,000+ deaths), the Latur earthquake in India (10,000 deaths), the Izmit earthquake in Turkey (17,000 deaths), and Hurricane Mitch that devastated Central America in 1998 (11,000 deaths). Trouble surfaced also on economic and social fronts, as well. A recession began in July, 1990, and “syncretic” anarchists” stirred the cauldron of mischief.
And wars! Who could forget the wars of the 1990s? That decade’s conflicts turned upside down the lives of many who wished only to continue living in relative peace. The strife of the 1990s that led to the deaths of innocents and conflict opponents included:
The Colombian Marxist Guerrilla War perpetrated by FARC, the Salvadoran Civil War perpetrated by the FLMN with an estimated 75,000 deaths, the Nicaraguan Civil War, the Honduran Guerrilla War, the Surinamese Civil War characterized by massacres, the Venezuelan Uprising, the Slovenian War of Independence, the Bosnian Civil War, the Croatian War of Independence (12,000 dead or missing), the Moldovan Civil War, the Algerian Civil War, the First and Second Civil Wars of Liberia that killed 250,000, the Malian Civil War, the Nigerian Civil War, the Sierra Leone Civil War, the Somalian Civil War, the Togolese Civil War, the Djibouti Civil War, the Senegalese Border War, the Ethiopian-Somalian Border War, the Ugandan Civil and Ugandan Guerrilla War, the 1994 Rwandan Civil War/genocide with an estimated 800,000 deaths, the South African Rebellion, the Armenian-Azerbaijani War, the Lebanese Civil War, the Georgian Civil War, the Tajikistan Civil War, the Turkey-PKK War, the Sri Lankan Civil War that killed 80,000, the insurgency in Kashmir, the Burmese Guerrilla War, the East Timor War, the Philippine Guerrilla War, the Laotian Guerrilla War, the Kampuchean-Thai Border War and the Kampuchean Civil War, the Chinese Tiananmen Square confrontation, the Papua New Guinea Civil War, the Haitian Civil War, the Chiapas Rebellion, the Guatemalan Civil War that ended in 1996 (read Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum’s account of earlier days of this war), the Ecuadorian-Peruvian Border Conflict, the Albanian Rebellion, the Uprising in Kosovo, the Chechen Revolt, the Second Chechen Revolt, the witch hunts in Ghana, the Ethiopian-Eritrean Border War, the Congolese Civil War, the Zairian Civil War that, like Rwanda, involved Tutsi and Hutu, the Comoran Rebellion, the Pakistani (Sindh) Civil War, the Invasion of Kuwait, Kurdish uprisings, the Gulf War with, according to Carnegie Mellon’s Beth Daponte, well over 100,000 deaths, and other conflicts that I probably missed. Just adding what I listed sums to 1,317,000 deaths, and I did not tally all from the other wars. Ten years and more than 50 wars! (Look through any decade of the past 1,000 years, and you will find similar numbers of conflicts and, as in WWI and WWII, many more deaths)
After one of my college classes in the 1990s, a 25-year-old veteran of the Gulf War told me, that he “couldn’t stand” the flippant attitude of his slightly younger classmates and that they should be sent off to see the rest of the world before they continued their education. Like so many others before him, he had personally experienced the killing and the troubles foisted upon the survivors. I remember similar statements by Vietnam War vets who took my classes in the 1970s. What they all noted I noted for the country: During the course of any decade, many maintain a flippant attitude even as troubles abound. Neither the attempted destruction of the World Trade Center’s North Tower by truck bomb in 1993 nor the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building seemed to shake people into adapting to the dangers at hand as precursors of the 9-11 attacks.
The encompassing troubles of the 1990s and the warnings they triggered reminded me of a poem written over a century earlier. I found myself sub-vocalizing lines from A. E. Housman’s “Terence, this is stupid stuff” that I have referred to in other blogs:
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good. *
That seems to be advice from a pessimist, but it carries some wisdom. The landscape of lives temporarily unaffected by trouble appears to be a smooth plain. But just as one type of landscape borders another on Earth as plains abut piedmonts and piedmonts abut mountains, for example, so the human landscape of peace and security borders on or transitions into a rugged and dangerous terrain.
Each of us will encounter some trouble forced upon us by Man or Nature. It’s our lot as humans to experience trouble, sorry to say. There’s no peaceful and secure human landscape that runs into forever; all natural and human landscapes border on change. Just before the outset of WWII, the people in Europe a little over two decades after destruction and death caused by WWI and the worldwide Depression, were beginning to walk on a smoother surface, only to suffer another war, one far more devastating than the previous Great War. Today, other countries are at war. Tomorrow, still others will fight. Diseases will ravage as COVID-19 has ravaged, and natural disasters will occur. Because we cannot seem to learn the lesson that this life isn’t practice, we humans will continue to exacerbate our troubles by adding what is avoidable to that which is unavoidable.
What we can’t control, such as earthquakes and storms that cross into our personal territories, forces us to adapt, and many of us have so adapted and will so adapt. Hard lessons have to be learned by those who train for good and not for ill.
*A. E. Housman. The collection is called A Shropshire Lad.
When I first considered writing about the human condition some 25 years ago, neither I nor anyone else had to strain to see the map of waxing troubles. It was all around us on a scale of 1:1 in the threats of epidemics and potential pandemics, such as the cholera outbreaks in Bangladesh (1991, about 9,000 deaths) and in Latin America (1991-93, 8,000 deaths), western Africa’s meningitis outbreak (1996, 10,000 deaths), and the potentially medieval-like, but short-lived, reappearance of the Bubonic and Pneumonic plagues in India (1994, 56 deaths). Trouble appeared also as natural disasters, such as the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone (138,000+ deaths), the Latur earthquake in India (10,000 deaths), the Izmit earthquake in Turkey (17,000 deaths), and Hurricane Mitch that devastated Central America in 1998 (11,000 deaths). Trouble surfaced also on economic and social fronts, as well. A recession began in July, 1990, and “syncretic” anarchists” stirred the cauldron of mischief.
And wars! Who could forget the wars of the 1990s? That decade’s conflicts turned upside down the lives of many who wished only to continue living in relative peace. The strife of the 1990s that led to the deaths of innocents and conflict opponents included:
The Colombian Marxist Guerrilla War perpetrated by FARC, the Salvadoran Civil War perpetrated by the FLMN with an estimated 75,000 deaths, the Nicaraguan Civil War, the Honduran Guerrilla War, the Surinamese Civil War characterized by massacres, the Venezuelan Uprising, the Slovenian War of Independence, the Bosnian Civil War, the Croatian War of Independence (12,000 dead or missing), the Moldovan Civil War, the Algerian Civil War, the First and Second Civil Wars of Liberia that killed 250,000, the Malian Civil War, the Nigerian Civil War, the Sierra Leone Civil War, the Somalian Civil War, the Togolese Civil War, the Djibouti Civil War, the Senegalese Border War, the Ethiopian-Somalian Border War, the Ugandan Civil and Ugandan Guerrilla War, the 1994 Rwandan Civil War/genocide with an estimated 800,000 deaths, the South African Rebellion, the Armenian-Azerbaijani War, the Lebanese Civil War, the Georgian Civil War, the Tajikistan Civil War, the Turkey-PKK War, the Sri Lankan Civil War that killed 80,000, the insurgency in Kashmir, the Burmese Guerrilla War, the East Timor War, the Philippine Guerrilla War, the Laotian Guerrilla War, the Kampuchean-Thai Border War and the Kampuchean Civil War, the Chinese Tiananmen Square confrontation, the Papua New Guinea Civil War, the Haitian Civil War, the Chiapas Rebellion, the Guatemalan Civil War that ended in 1996 (read Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum’s account of earlier days of this war), the Ecuadorian-Peruvian Border Conflict, the Albanian Rebellion, the Uprising in Kosovo, the Chechen Revolt, the Second Chechen Revolt, the witch hunts in Ghana, the Ethiopian-Eritrean Border War, the Congolese Civil War, the Zairian Civil War that, like Rwanda, involved Tutsi and Hutu, the Comoran Rebellion, the Pakistani (Sindh) Civil War, the Invasion of Kuwait, Kurdish uprisings, the Gulf War with, according to Carnegie Mellon’s Beth Daponte, well over 100,000 deaths, and other conflicts that I probably missed. Just adding what I listed sums to 1,317,000 deaths, and I did not tally all from the other wars. Ten years and more than 50 wars! (Look through any decade of the past 1,000 years, and you will find similar numbers of conflicts and, as in WWI and WWII, many more deaths)
After one of my college classes in the 1990s, a 25-year-old veteran of the Gulf War told me, that he “couldn’t stand” the flippant attitude of his slightly younger classmates and that they should be sent off to see the rest of the world before they continued their education. Like so many others before him, he had personally experienced the killing and the troubles foisted upon the survivors. I remember similar statements by Vietnam War vets who took my classes in the 1970s. What they all noted I noted for the country: During the course of any decade, many maintain a flippant attitude even as troubles abound. Neither the attempted destruction of the World Trade Center’s North Tower by truck bomb in 1993 nor the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building seemed to shake people into adapting to the dangers at hand as precursors of the 9-11 attacks.
The encompassing troubles of the 1990s and the warnings they triggered reminded me of a poem written over a century earlier. I found myself sub-vocalizing lines from A. E. Housman’s “Terence, this is stupid stuff” that I have referred to in other blogs:
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good. *
That seems to be advice from a pessimist, but it carries some wisdom. The landscape of lives temporarily unaffected by trouble appears to be a smooth plain. But just as one type of landscape borders another on Earth as plains abut piedmonts and piedmonts abut mountains, for example, so the human landscape of peace and security borders on or transitions into a rugged and dangerous terrain.
Each of us will encounter some trouble forced upon us by Man or Nature. It’s our lot as humans to experience trouble, sorry to say. There’s no peaceful and secure human landscape that runs into forever; all natural and human landscapes border on change. Just before the outset of WWII, the people in Europe a little over two decades after destruction and death caused by WWI and the worldwide Depression, were beginning to walk on a smoother surface, only to suffer another war, one far more devastating than the previous Great War. Today, other countries are at war. Tomorrow, still others will fight. Diseases will ravage as COVID-19 has ravaged, and natural disasters will occur. Because we cannot seem to learn the lesson that this life isn’t practice, we humans will continue to exacerbate our troubles by adding what is avoidable to that which is unavoidable.
What we can’t control, such as earthquakes and storms that cross into our personal territories, forces us to adapt, and many of us have so adapted and will so adapt. Hard lessons have to be learned by those who train for good and not for ill.
*A. E. Housman. The collection is called A Shropshire Lad.
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