‘The modern world has made us ill-equipped’
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
‘Our longing for inconvenience’
Hanif Abdurraqib at The New Yorker
Longing for “Walkmans and VCRs is, of course, an offshoot of a larger obsession with the not-so-distant past,” says Hanif Abdurraqib. There is a “longing for some previous era, if not actually a desire to return to it.” The “yearning for the past often lands us on the somewhat hollow nostalgia of ephemera: if we can’t have the nineties back, we can build a life of things that might feel transportative,” and “convenience and inaction are often bedfellows.”
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‘History is running backwards’
David Brooks at The Atlantic
Many “thought that the world would get more democratic as it modernized, but for the past quarter century, we have seen a reversion to authoritarian strongmen,” says David Brooks. People “used to have a clear idea of where modernity was heading — toward greater autonomy and equality, secularism, stronger individual rights, cultural openness and liberal democracy.” Science and reason “would prosper while superstition and conspiracy-mongering would wither away.” But it “turns out that was yesterday’s vision of the future.”
‘Yes, of course war settles things’
Rich Lowry at the National Review
There are “many things that can be said about the tragedy of warfare without crediting the blatantly ahistorical cliché that it is never the answer, or doesn’t solve disputed questions, often with a terrible finality,” says Rich Lowry. War can “determine international boundaries and the nature of governments.” It “might be pointless, or fought for prestige, revenge or territorial aggrandizement. That’s all true, but it doesn’t change the fact that military conflict is, at times, necessary.”
‘Polio has no cure. The vaccine is the only way to save lives.’
Simone Blaser at USA Today
Making polio vaccines “optional is a bad idea. It’s also a dangerous one,” says Simone Blaser. There is “no cure for polio, but there is a way to prevent this terrible illness.” If the “polio vaccine becomes optional,” it “becomes a mathematical certainty that we will see a resurgence.” You “may believe your choice doesn’t affect others, but there is no way to know who in a community is unvaccinated, whose immune system is shoddy, or who is particularly vulnerable.”
