On The Radar | Complacency or Despair
Donella Meadows | Frailty | The Human Spring | A Sandcastle Victory
There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.
| Donella Meadows
…
This is the human condition: on one hand, bad news, on the other, good. We are caught — stretched between seemingly irreconcilable extremes, seeking both understanding and a way forward.
I found the statement by Arnaud Rousseau (cited by Roger Cohen, below), a compelling recast of this tension:
The end of the world versus the end of the month.
May you find your way.
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Frailty
Rachel Bedard zooms in on geriatric frailty, which is a well-understood condition associated with aging, and which we are seeing Joe Biden exhibit:
Frailty is the most important, all-encompassing geriatric syndrome: It’s the framework we use to describe what others sometimes understand as the accumulating burdens of old age. Not everyone who is old is frail, and not everyone who is frail is old, but frailty is exceedingly common as people get older (it affects as many as a quarter of people who are over 85), and it often precedes serious debility and decline.
Much of the confusion surrounding Mr. Biden’s debate performance stems from his being described as having good days and bad days, rather than a more consistent level of functioning. These reports have been met with speculation and skepticism: Is he really ever doing all that well if, as reporting suggests, there have been multiple incidents of cognitive lapses that seem to be growing more frequent? Mustn’t this suggest some sort of cover-up about his condition?
Without knowing the specifics of the president’s health issues, I say: perhaps but not necessarily. A shifting ratio of good days and bad days is often how clinical frailty appears. The pattern of decline in frailty is a gradual dwindling of a person’s health, a line sloping slowly downward.
Dr. Patricia Cantley has written about a useful analogy that she offers to frail patients and their loved ones to explain what’s going on: A beautiful, skillfully assembled paper boat sailing on a pond may look great and sail without difficulty as long as the water is calm and the sun is shining. But should a gust of wind or a wave come up unexpectedly, the paper boat is vulnerable to damage, may tip over easily and is unlikely to be righted and sail as well as before.
We shouldn't be sailing a paper boat on some future windy day.
The Human Spring
Roger Cohen writes about growing unrest in Europe among farmers confronted by rising prices, perceived EU bureaucratic overreach on ecological goals, and nationalist strains exacerbated by the war in Ukraine:
Down on the European farm, revolt has stirred. The discontent, leading farmers to quit and demonstrate, threatens to do more than change how Europe produces its food. Angry farmers are blunting climate goals. They are reshaping politics ahead of elections for the European Parliament in June. They are shaking European unity against Russia as the war in Ukraine increases their costs.
“It’s the end of the world versus the end of the month,” Arnaud Rousseau, the head of the FNSEA, France’s largest farmers’ union, said in an interview. “There’s no point talking about farm practices that help save the environment, if farmers cannot make a living. Ecology without an economy makes no sense.”
The turmoil has emboldened a far right that thrives on grievances and rattled a European establishment forced to make concessions. In recent weeks, farmers have blocked highways and descended on the streets of European capitals in a disruptive, if disjointed, outburst against what they call “existential challenges.” In a shed full of the ducks he raises, Jean-Christophe Paquelet said: “Yes, I joined the protests because we are submerged in rules. My ducks’ lives are short but at least they have no worries.”
I've written for years about what I refer to as the Human Spring, where a movement led by unions, underpaid and marginalized workers, and the great underclass of the disaffected -- those who have lost trust in the political, religious, and social institutions theoretically intended to work on behalf of the people -- will rise up and demand sweeping changes.
I originally suggested the mid-2020s as the time it might come together, but I hadn't imagined Covid and the economic disruptions it has introduced.
But our movement is coming, in fits and starts, and one point of tension is 'the end of the world versus the end of the month': governments failed to stem climate change when it would have been cheaper, decades ago, and the costs are rising along with the heat. And people like European farmers are at the forefront of this uprising. It's not just coming; it's here, now.
A Sandcastle Victory
David Wallace-Wells echoes the fifth estate in the UK, who are concerned that a 'landslide victory' isn't:
Anyone looking at vote totals as a measure of the British political mood sees a more muddied and ambiguous picture, with commentators already calling it a “sandcastle” victory, a “landslide that isn’t a landslide,” and “a thumping majority without a thumping share of the vote.” Only 34 percent of British voters chose Labour — lower than most pre-election forecasts of 40 percent and lower than polling suggested when the election was first announced, when 50 percent seemed in play.
Thanks to low turnout, Labour won this time with the support of only about 20 percent of the British public, with lower vote totals than the party achieved under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 and 2019, and Labour’s leader, Keir Starmer, collected only half as many votes in his district as he did in either of those two elections. Even so, a first-past-the-post system and a strategic campaign by Labour turned what was a relatively weak plurality at the level of public opinion into a hammering legislative supermajority in government.
They have a great deal of clout, but Labour could be turned out as easily as the 'landslide' victory was to win.