It has been interesting and exasperating to read some of the responses to Bill Branyon’s thoughtfully researched and crafted commentary about the views of Jack Cecil’s ancestor, Lord Robert Cecil [“Dear John Francis Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil IV (Jack),” May 10, Xpress]. Presented as a warning to those of us alive now, it is perhaps too intellectually challenging for some folks to see the serious issues that our country and the world have, thus far, refused to meaningfully address to the peril of life on Earth.
Einstein said: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything, save our mode of thinking. Thus, we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” It is our thinking about conflict and our relationship to our natural environment that has got to evolve past our primitive brains. What is the logic of destroying nations, their peoples and environments to achieve some perceived safety? It is the complete absence of logic! War is the ultimate stupidity. It must end!
As long as we remain stupid, those who profit from war will gladly create the next one and the next one and the next one.
Bill’s article was a clarion call to end our enabling. Sadly, most eyes and ears are not able to see or hear.
Einstein also said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Can we even imagine a world in which war is abolished? In which resources are shared, in which communities and societies are strong because they invest in what lifts up human beings and the natural world?
War and climate disruption/pollution/human disease and environmental disintegration are related. If humans are such evolved creatures, why do we still depend on the threat of mass destruction and war to achieve security? We need to be about the business of protecting our natural environment, seeing humanity as part of the web of all life on Earth. More industries manufacturing weapons parts and destroying hundreds of acres of pristine forests and the living webs within them is the opposite of what our community needs to truly thrive.
— Anne Craig
Asheville
Most eyes can see that you and your tiny gang hog the pages here with repetitive nonsense not grounded in reality. Go away.
So the gist of this letter is, “if you don’t agree with our position, you’re dumb”. Now that’s some quality content! More, please!
That’s exactly what they’re saying. “If you don’t agree with us, you must have a small brain and you must be stupid”. Everything else is just regurgitated from previous posts.
Read more carefully, Shultzy. Anne Craig criticized “some of the responses” to Bill Branyon’s piece, not everyone who might have disagreed with it. If you go back and review the specific responses that appeared online after the piece, you’ll find that some of them are pretty dumb. As is your comment.
So why keep supporting the Democrats in DC that are pouring BILLIONS of $$$ into funding the national suicide of the people of Ukraine (with LARGE laundered kickbacks to the secret offshore accounts of the Big Guy and the Z-Man)?
I agree, Anne. Ignore the neanderthal comments.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/opinion/nato-ukraine-russia-peace.html?fbclid=IwAR3QQCBQgXL4sJ6fWQtwNqfXE_ByxQe61jvGbfALlpYSeMlGyiHdtGEcbRs
This op-ed in the New York Times states, among other things:
“… Ample evidence suggests that enlarging NATO over the years stoked Moscow’s grievances and heightened Ukraine’s vulnerability.
After the Cold War ended, Moscow wanted NATO, previously an anti-Soviet military alliance, to freeze in place and diminish in significance. Instead, Western countries elevated NATO as the premier vehicle for European security and began an open-ended process of eastward expansion…
…As Ukraine’s domestic struggles became entangled in a resurgent East-West rivalry, it sought to join NATO and found a powerful backer: President George W. Bush.
In the run-up to NATO’s summit in 2008, Mr. Bush wanted to give Ukraine and Georgia a formal path to enter the alliance, called a Membership Action Plan. Before the meeting, William Burns, the current C.I.A. director who was then ambassador to Russia, cautioned that such a move would have deadly consequences…”
it seems to me that Einstein’s famous quote regarding imagination vis a vis knowledge was about exactly that.. imagination, not delusion. The writer’s lack of insight into human nature and how highly ‘evolved” we are is nothing short of staggering. sigh.