[Rhodes22-list] Evolution in Action?

[Saroj Gilbert]

very nicely put, Robert...  It puts the whole issue into a context from 
which one can better understand the whole scene... the complex and 
long-lived dynamics that have created the broader situation.

Saroj


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Skinner" <robert at squirrelhaven.com>
To: "Rhodes 22 mail list" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 10:41 AM
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] Evolution in Action?


> The New Colossus
>
> Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
> With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
> Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
> A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
> Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
> Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
> Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
> The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
> "Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
> With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
> Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
> The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
> Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
> I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
>
> /Emma Lazarus
>
> ---------------------------------------------
>
> Yes, many of the poor were unprepared.
>
> They were also unmotivated, uneducated,
> and the cultural descendants of two
> populations who were forcibly transported
> from their native lands (Acadia and Africa)
> where they were doing quite well, thank you.
>
> So are we now going to say that their personal
> and immediate failings are sufficient to
> justify a social Darwinism? -- one where we are
> observers of evolution in action as these
> humans, for all their faults, are allowed
> to sink further into the social, political,
> and economic mire that is the aftermath of
> Katrina?
>
> Or do we view the events from a higher
> altitude and see the current situation as the
> continuation of trends that began a couple
> of hundred years ago?
>
> We can conclude that we have set up systems
> that support and reward sloth and short-
> sighted thinking, but that does not absolve
> us from a requirement to do what we can to
> alleviate the suffering of our fellow man.
>
> Instead, it fixes the responsibility on us
> to re-invent the social support mechanisms
> so that they reward personal initiative while
> providing at least the bare minimums of
> life, health, and education support.
>
> Let's get on with the social and political
> repairs, and worry less about who screwed
> up.  As a perceptive denizen of the swamp
> observed, "We have met the enemy, and he is
> us."*  Not you, not me, but "us".
>
> To make physical repairs without concurrent
> social, political, and economic repairs is to
> perpetuate the real suffering that resulted
> from Katrina.
>
> It's time to think outside the levee.
>
> -- 
> Robert Skinner
>
> * http://www.igopogo.com/we_have_met.htm
>
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