I wrote:
> >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.

Mary wrote

>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...

Mary,

The point I was making is not incompatible with the point you are 
making.  As Mike had referred to Battle of Britain pilots in this 
paragraph I was very much thinking of the same group, one that I have 
a particular interest in.  If you think my description of their 
pre-service personalities was meant to damn them you completely 
mis-read or mis-interpret my meaning.  They were not a random 
selection of young men.  If it needs amplifying the point is that 
some young men who had rather varied approaches to life, most of whom 
were not terribly serious or political showed great courage in 
extraordinary circumstances.  I think the beginning of the next 
paragraph should make that clear.

> >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?

I hope we all know better, and Michael's example clearly shows that he does.

> >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).

Looking a little further back it is perhaps more obvious that you 
seriously reduced your chances of "breeding" if you were 
broken.  That still has some truth, but it's less obvious.

>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?

Either would be to _hugely_ oversimplify.  I'd assumed that on this 
list that the complexity and intricacy of both reproduction and 
survival were understood and self-evident.  I certainly didn't mean 
it to apply only to Europeans, nor does it necessarily apply only to 
humans, though we're better placed to appreciate it.

> >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...

Wow, I'm not far behind your age and I don't feel certain of either 
of the points above.  Lucky enough still to feel valued by our 
society  and uncertain enough to leave it to history whether this 
post-reproductive adult does have any value.

>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?

Yes, though my point was nothing to do with "training as a 
combatant".  The experience of nearness of death, of loss, of the 
randomness of life and death in some circumstances, of an incredible 
degree of dependence on others, of the need for both leadership and 
followership, of the need for difficult imperfect decisions, and of 
the real possibility of both success and failure is much closer to 
what I was trying to get at.  Our debt to those who've gone before is 
central (though highly unoriginal).  Lincoln touched on it in the 
Gettysburg address, but almost every parent hopes that they can pass 
on something (knowledge, wisdom, wealth) so that their descendants 
will have better opportunities.

>We have to face the problems of our time. Post war society included 
>support for McCarthyism and segregation.

The post war world included a China that would see 20 million of its 
own people starve rather than admit its system wasn't working, 
Cambodia and the Killing Fields, North Korea, and a dozen other 
places which dwarf either the political repression of McCarthyism 
(awful though that was), or the political and economic repression of 
segregation.

However the principle is not lost even in your examples.  We face new 
challenges but there remains the need for courage, endeavour, and 
commitment often in imperfect circumstances, because the alternative 
is far worse.  For some the physical courage required in war is the 
greatest challenge, for others the daily grind is still more 
difficult.  Neither is easy and both matter.

Julian
PS Original posting while a bit philosophical and questioning was 
intended to be uncontroversial.  Apologies if somehow it touched a raw nerve.