Meetings with managers at work are frustrating experiences. Each manager at every job I’ve had has appreciated a fresh perspective on existing situations, but there is always a limit to what is accepted. At some point history is used as a weapon to limit progress: “You should’ve seen how bad it was before,” or, “That’s just the way it is at this company.” These statements are thought-enders, the killing of any progress among new employees; exhaustion has set in among the long-term employees who wish to stay in the improved situation they have found for themselves.
But things degrade. Good things don’t continue without constant vigilance. When we recall moments in history, we should use them to commemorate our collective struggle to survive, not to fool ourselves into thinking our place is secure.
I see it with the United States now. Plenty of people believed that certain elements of society were off-limits and decided, so they ignored the indications that a challenge was forthcoming. We are now in a constitutional crisis, attacked on multiple fronts from within. We have already lost so much because too few people thought it was even necessary to fight.
Closer than ever:
It is now 89 seconds to midnight2025 Doomsday Clock Statement Science and Security Board
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
This degrading of our quality of life comes from a lack of historical literacy. We have forgotten how close to disaster we are at any moment; we live on a series of fragile systems upon which our daily life depends and we don’t seem to care. Ignorance of their existence or function leads us to taking certain privileges for granted, forgetting that many people outside our bubble of experience may not share in those advantages and that we too could find ourselves stripped of them within a moment. We have become dependent on these systems to survive; our graves might fail to contain the number of dead should any of these systems fail.
Charles C. Mann — The New Atlantis
We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It
Jefferson lived in a world of horse-drawn carriages, blazing fireplaces, and yellow fever. But what most separates our day from his is not our automobiles, airplanes, and high-rise apartments — it is that today vast systems provide abundant food, water, energy, and health to most people. In Jefferson’s time, not even the president of the United States had what we have. But few of us are aware of that, or of what it means.
Our safety net of service and rescue industries have dulled our senses to how difficult and primitive life could be for many of us. It’s not just a disinterest that could doom us; we are managing to actively find disdain for the hard-fought victories won by our predecessors. We are neglecting our duty to be good stewards of what we have been given.
Our lack of care for the systems that preserve us is evident in the rise of vaccine hesitancy, a groundless fear based on misinformation and junk science. What amounts to modern-day sci-fi magic — one needs only to be injected with a serum and they become immune to a disease — is being treated with greater skepticism and fear than it deserves. We are dooming future generations to unnecessary pain because of our ignorance. Our country already faced this issue and won, yet we are returning to the battlefield once more, but this time without a weapon.
Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.
“I feel all sleepy,” she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.
On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.
It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk. In America, where measles immunisation is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.
Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.
LET THAT SINK IN.
Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles.
So what about the risks that your children will run from being immunised?
They are almost non-existent. Listen to this. In a district of around 300,000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunisation! That is about a million to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunisation. So what on earth are you worrying about? It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunised.
The ideal time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is never too late. All school-children who have not yet had a measles immunisation should beg their parents to arrange for them to have one as soon as possible.
Incidentally, I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was James and the Giant Peach. That was when she was still alive. The second was The BFG, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.
Roald Dahl
Because we have forgotten our place in history we are falling backwards, losing hard-fought progress in science and health safety. These fields and many others are being attacked by the new fascist regime. Our infrastructure that keeps us alive is being systematically dismantled and our children will pay the price for our foolishness. We must remember who we are, how short a life can be, and what we stand to lose by not fighting to survive.