Commentary for the 21st Century

We are the part of a new historical epoch. Let’s try to paint its portrait.
The face of the 21st century is our environment. When talking about environmental problems, ecological issues cannot be separated from their effect on mankind, nor can human actions be separate from their effect on the ecology. The condition of our life, our daily actions, and the state of the global environment are interdependent, yet often this interdependence is overlooked.
For many people, the most alarming of all human assaults on the environment is the contamination of air, earth, and water from dumping. Evidence of dumping can be found everywhere, done by individuals and large corporations alike. Hong Kong for example dumps more than 1,000 tons of plastic a day. Americans throw away 16 billion disposable diapers each year. Open sewage drains and festering landfills are common sites in many parts of the world. In a small Malaysian village, babies born deformed and children die of rare illnesses, which their doctors claim are caused by exposure to radiation from a multinational company that set up business in this small community. Ted Peters in his essay “Not In My Backyard” says about the problem of toxic waste. He is shocked it is to be put in a neighborhood – whether it is an AIDS shelter, a halfway house for ex-prisoners, or a toxic waste site. Any of this facilities would be perceived as a threat our personal health and safety, and self-preservation is one of man’s most central needs. Peters presents several possible reasonable advances to deal with the issue. He tenders the option to sight the area where the waste is to be placed as the “underdog” and the government or industry that needs to place the toxic waste as the evil bully. He offers the option to “constipate the system”. But it is sure to be unreasonable, nor is “clogging the system” indefinitely.
Nevertheless, Peters offers some interesting solutions to the problem of where to put the toxic waste. He proposes to focus on safety and permanence. The toxic waste dump should be placed – not in the community with the least money or the community with the greatest need for a government payoff – but at “place where it will be contained safely and permanently”. I hope, it will work.
We all are the children of Earth. I wish we didn’t forget about it. We need to be concerned with the environment not just now, but for future generations. The time has come for doing rather than saying.
And maybe if we understood it and didn’t close our eyes, ears and mouths like three monkeys - we would make our world beautiful and wouldn’t be afraid for the future of our (yet prospect, but…) kids.
From the earliest time, people have always been afraid of everything unknown and incomprehensible. First, they didn’t know simple things about nature and just prayed to the Sun, Rain, Fire to make their lives better; than, in the Middle Ages, they burned scientists for their works and achievements; today they are still afraid to make one more step to the future.
Cloning is sure to be one of the main human fears. This is the 21st century’s mind.
Why do people think cloning is not natural? Why is it supposed to be something wrong? Virginia Postrel in her “Fatalist Attraction” describes this problem perfectly: she quotes philosopher John Gray’s opposition to organ transplants as far back as 1993. “Taking a part from a dead human being and refitting it into another, or growing them a new organ from their own or another’s cells? Strange, that we are actively encouraged by government to become organ donors.”
The argument seems to be that we are trying to interfere with nature’s course. Postrel gives an excellent counter argument in citing the amount of medications that we take on a daily basis to fight what nature had intended for us. “These days, we in the rich countries have the wonderful luxury of rejecting even minor ailments, from menstrual cramps to migraines, as unnecessary and treatable.”
Perhaps, opposing to the progress in biotechnology, people just forget that there are dozens of awful illnesses taking away their lives. Millions of people suffer greatly from cancer, AIDS, leukemia. Every day they wake up with one hope: to be cured. And, fortunately today the progress in curing illnesses throughout the twentieth century are truly remarkable. Many terrible illnesses are being successfully healed. Today it is difficult to imagine living in a world where transplant operation is not available. And I am sure: some time later we will not be able to imagine living in a world where growing a new organ from a cell is not obtainable.
Of course, the human fear of cloning is not really about stem cell research and finding cures for disease. People are afraid of uncontrolled progress in future. It is the fear that we will have the power to produce human clones and use them like producing material or work-people, for example. That is quite possible and it even has been proved with the experiment on Dolly the sheep. “Society” may not ask for them, but individuals do.” For me, the author in this one sentence sums up why cloning research will continue to evolve. You now can’t unlearn cloning so people know it is possible. Once man has knowledge the natural instinct is to explore it further. The conflict arises again of individual versus society.
Maybe clones will become usual citizens of the world. However, not soon, I suppose. Our society is not ready for such scientific revolution.
Cloning is sure to be one of the greatest human achievements, which may change our world for better. I am sure that careful monitoring (not interference) the benefits of cloning to humankind will be revolutionary. If it happened, we would win the long war not only on numerous illnesses but on death too.
I can’t but say about the great danger of terrorism today - the stigmata of the 21st century…
The problem of terrorism Samuel Francis in his work “Why the Terrorists Attacked Us” observes. Francis lays out his contentious theory on why America was attacked by terrorists on September 11th 2005. In a no nonsense fashion he implies that the past interventions by the government brought about this attack.
“Is this a War? The author seems to think we are and have been for many years possibly since the first war against Iraq in 1991. However, as the author points out nobody seems to know who we are at war with. From America’s point of view these are uncharted waters. Many other countries have had to deal with the treat of terrorism for years and have developed various strategies in dealing with it. However none of them have ever called it a war.
The Author writes “Mainly, what most Americans wanted to do –entirely understandably- was to blow the hell out of somebody or something.” In many ways it is the stereotypical response that just about everyone in the world would have predicted from America. In calling this a war the terrorists have gotten the exactly what they needed to recruit people to commit similar hideous acts of terrorism against us. Ironically, America has been at the center of trying to get terrorist organizations such as the IRA to negotiate through talks and not the gun with the UK government. What side would America have been on if the UK had said it was declaring War on the IRA and started to bomb targets in Northern Ireland?
People have always looked for righteousness in their lives. All of them are sure to have their own vision of happiness, good life, justice. However, sometimes their standpoints are deeply different. Here is the problem of misunderstanding between them. People are still building the Babylon tower and speaking different languages: somebody finds the world to be beautiful and somebody thinks that it is wrong, full of hate and injustice. Therefore, the main matter for such persons is to change and modify it globally. Not for better, unfortunately. They are ready to ruin, kill, and make others suffer greatly. They are cruel and angry with the government, officers and just people. They want the world to repay for their unluckiness, loneliness, nothingness. That’s why they commit awful crimes, trying to make people to be afraid of life. They try to destroy the stability of mankind with the help of terror. Sometimes they fight for their own religious ideals… They imagine they are the arms of God to punish and to change the world. Their ill psyche – not their motherland or compatriots - are sure to be the main problem. That’s why the way to get rid of fear, to save our world from the darkness of terrorism is not the distribution of cruelty and war. We must learn to struggle not with nations but with the dangerous elements of society.
One is left to ponder if there could have been a better response to 9/11. The author seems to suggest that we got what we deserved. Terrorism can never be condoned, but the motives must be scrutinized honestly if we are to eliminate the threat. No amount of military action will ever halt terrorism. Dialogue and understanding is the key.
Gandhi believed that the politics of passive resistance nonviolence should be effective in any situation, at any time, even against a force as malign as Nazi Germany. He was sure “a simple life in a simple society” without wars, hate and pain would be the greatest result of human evolution.
The work by Eric Fromm “Escape from Freedom” in which he deviates the opinion that mankind fights to be free, illustrates the problem of a dual nature of security. In this work, the author states that many people are not looking for freedom, but for someone to take care of them and tell them what to do and think. “Freedom carries too many risks and requires us to be dependable for ourselves. In order to have Big Brother take care of us – we need to hand over our freedom. A modern day example might be the “On Star” car safety system. Oh, they will take care of us all right, but they will also track everywhere we go. Do we really want someone knowing our clandestine destinations? Do we even want someone to know our benign destinations?”
Linda Bowles in the essay “Big Brother’s Two-Minute Hate: Regulating Vice on Campus” declares: “In order to get on an airplane today we must remove watches and belts and shoes. We drop our lighters in the large box by the security checkpoint. We do this without an argument. If they decide that we must strip down to our underwear, we most likely will do that too. We want to be safe. We do what we are told. We do not question. We are taken care of, but at what price?”
To be in safe and to prevent terror acts we must be calm and discreet. If we were not, we could not see the tomorrow sun, perhaps. We want to be safe. We do what we are told, but sometimes it seems like a government manipulation. But, wearing a beautiful light dress of freedom people should not forget about the importance of armor hidden in the wardrobe.
To finish with I would like to say we all are painters drawing the portrait of the 21st century. We should choose light colors to make its face beautiful.