In message <[log in to unmask]>,
Julian Bradley <[log in to unmask]> writes
>We stand on the shoulders of great men, and mixing metaphors I agree
>that it is difficult to fill their shoes. They were the idle youths of
>the 30s, the spoilt children of the rich and nouveau riche, the boys
>who wanted to have fun and the best looking girlfriends, and no doubt
>some who saw the military as a chance to move at least one step up the
>pecking order.
I think you do them an injustice.
No doubt * some* were spoilt idle youths: but the 30s were full of the
depression: and to assume that their motivation was to rise in the
pecking order (whether or not they were "the spoilt children of the rich
and nouveau rich") seems a bit sweeping. After all, experience from the
previous war would have suggested that their chance of surviving was not
that good...
>
>They rose to a challenge in a way that we have not been called to do,
>in a way that no few of their generation failed to meet, and in a way
>that many of us would fail to meet. Many died. Many were broken.
>Many endured and learnt. Some found greatness either transitorily or
>(rarely) more lastingly.
"Greatness" = fame?
>
>In general we are not the descendants of the broken, but of the
>survivors of a thousand generations. Their luck, and almost always
>something more than luck too, is one of the many blessings they left
>us. The question each day is how we value and use those blessings. Do
>we preserve what is good and build for the future or do we squander and
>dissipate what was so hard won?
Bit confused here. Obviously, we are the descendants of individuals who
survived. (You can be "broken" and breed: you cannot be dead and breed).
I suppose this is natural selection: Europeans have been genetically
selected to survive plagues like measles - which are still lethal to
populations which have not encountered them (with the subsequent
selection of resistant stock) in the past..
Are you talking about genetics or social/moral attitudes?
>
>We have different challenges, but they're no less important to those
>who follow us, and I'm not really sure they're much easier than those
>our forebears faced. Perhaps the only real difference is that we live
>longer and have more time to consider our mistakes?
There appears to be an advantage for survival in having adults surviving
beyond the age of reproduction. This would seem to be largely
counteracted in the present by the attitude that anyone over 40 is
senile...
The challenges *are* different - and although the training as a
combatant in WWII was certainly influential in shaping the attitudes and
values of the survivors, does this really have implications for the
present generation?
We have to face the problems of our time. Post war society included
support for McCarthyism and segregation.
MaryH
>
>Julian
--
Mary Hawking
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