In the aftermath of the 9/11 Al Qaeda attack I remember writing that America should take care not to over-react to that singular act of terror. Over-reaction could only play into the hands of the perpetrators and make matters worse. Here is a portion of what I wrote.
“Though far from possessing the capacity to emulate them, I think I admire the Stoics most of all the philosophers. Probably we would all like to be able to approach disaster, illness, bereavement and eventually death with the unflinching restraint of the Stoics. Certainly it must be very rare for any man or woman not to need the strength of a Stoic sometimes in a lifetime since, the truth be told, we really have about as much control of what is going to happen to us hour by hour, day by day, as one of the Stoics remarked, “as a dog tied to the tail of a cart – he can run a little from side to side, and bark loudly,
but if he tries to stand still his lead will strangle him since he has no power over the driver of the cart.” But, however useful in terrible times, it is not an easy philosophy to live up to in practice.
The Stoics took catastrophe, and the threat of catastrophe, in their stride. They believed that to be virtuous involved being unaffected by pain, pleasure, desire or fear which were emotions belonging to a lower level of existence. To them the ends most men pursue so eagerly – wealth, success, comfort – have no importance. The revered Stoic Emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations wrote that it was man’s duty to forgive injuries, regard all men as brothers and await death with equanimity.
Basically, Stoics think and act on the basis of “what will be will be.” Americans are going to have to learn that philosophy or spend their lives in desperate daily trepidation worrying constantly about what might be going to happen, taking over-elaborate and costly precautions against the ten million to one chance of another Bin Laden strike affecting them as individuals, sensing danger in every shadow that passed unseen before, changing life styles in ways that contradict their culture, undermine their economy and threaten their freedoms, existing permanently on anxious tenterhooks. Living as if you are about to be struck by lightning at any time is absurd and is anyway unlikely to divert the lightning strike. Paranoia in a nation spells great trouble.”
I asked if America was going to jump high and mighty every time some shadowy bogey-man shouted boo. I was then criticized for taking a much too laid-back, quiescent, head-in-the sand view of the grim reality of modern-day threats. I am not sure whether I or my critics were right but given the mass of lives lost and treasure squandered and nothing solved and innumerable hornet’s nests worse than before stirred up by the Iraq War I am inclined to claim I was right.
Now I see new and vivid examples of panic which could lead to misconceived and wrongly directed action by the rich, developed nations in the face of outbreaks of brutal violence and dangerous plague – very serious, no doubt, but needing to be tackled with calm and a sense of perspective when one appreciates all the other more serious long-term problems that have to be solved.
America, Canada and European countries have already begun to spend vast sums protecting themselves against the dreaded Ebola. There have been a couple of deaths in these rich countries whereas tens of thousands die every year from flu.
Yet they are in the process of spending on themselves who are in minimal danger hundreds of times what they could and should have spent on halting Ebola in West Africa at the start and/or wiping out the other plagues in Africa like malaria that kill millions and not the 5,000 so far killed by Ebola.
Is this not getting things out of perspective? Even an international body, the World Health Organisation, which should be dispassionate and level-headed, appears to have gone overboard when it describes the Ebola outbreak as “the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times.” Really?
And let us remember in this rich world panic, the Ebola outbreak was entirely controllable if it had not been for a series of brutal reductions in contributions by the world’s industrialised countries to the WHO, thus preventing it from responding to this outbreak properly. In addition, several of these rich countries have cut their budgets to national health institutions. This has badly delayed research to find a vaccine against Ebola, not to mention vaccines against other “poor people” diseases.
I am also inclined to write against the grain of what seems to be the popular headline view of what is another almighty panic going on in the world – over ISIS, the savage, merciless, self-styled Caliphate in the Middle East which has captured the attention of the world principally through the beheadings of a few innocent, tragic bystanders. I am revolted as the next person at what ISIS does and what it stands for.
But, honestly, is it not playing absolutely into ISIS’s plans for foreigners to spend billions (which could be spent far more productively) attacking the locals from the air? This will not defeat ISIS and the civilian deaths resulting will only, as always, strengthen its recruiting drive and further its cause. This mistake is being made over and over again. Panic – the urge to do something, anything, even something stupid – rules.
It astonishes me how so much attention, so many bombs and bodies, so much treasure, so many valuable man-hours, so much high-quality thinking time, such a quantity of resources are being poured into these really very temporary challenges (the headlines will be quite different this time next year) when so many long-term, devastating problems with infinitely more potential for greater and continuing disaster exist and do not attract anything like the same urgency of attention and expenditure of resources – perfectly preventable premature deaths in children, the bringing of hundreds of millions of women world-wide out of abused, inferior and uneducated lives, plagues like malaria that routinely kill millions, the lack of pure water for millions of the poorest – with global warming and lethal climate change looming over all.
The trouble in the world is that its leaders see, think and act (often in a panic) near-term to defeat the vermin of the day and ignore the horizons where the real dragons prowl.
