Author: Patrick Clarkin

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Cleaning the Mess Left Behind in Laos

Good news. Two days ago, Voice of America reported that President Obama would announce more funding to remove bombs that the U.S. dropped on Laos. Some messes are so large that they can seem nearly impossible to clean up. The damage in Laos is so extensive that it will last for several more generations, but this is an improvement over the status quo.

The VOA video accompanying the story (below) looked instantly familiar to me, as it shows some of that damage in Xieng Khouang province. It looked very much like the area I saw the time I visited with one of the removal teams a few years ago. In fact, I saw some familiar faces. They do good work and deserve more support. 

Channapha Khamvongsa, the founder and executive director of Legacies of War, an organization that advocates for removing the bombs said this: “What was once thought to be an insurmountable task now seems achievable in 10 to 20 years rather than a century… The next decade is critical, however, and it is necessary for the U.S. to commit to a long-term and sustained level of funding for UXO clearance and victim assistance in Laos.”

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Is the Human Species Sexually Omnivorous?

I wrote a new post for the “Evolution Institute” website. I had wrapped up the Humans are (Blank)-ogamous series, but a friend asked if I would write something for the site. So, this is what I came up with. It has a few snippets from the series, but the majority of it is new. I’m always tentative after writing, not knowing if it’s any good or not. Now that I’ve re-read it a few more times, I think it’s not too shabby. Anyway…

https://evolution-institute.org/blog/is-the-human-species-sexually-omnivorous/

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Reconciling “Unbridgeable Differences” in Vietnam

Last week, U.S. Sec of State John Kerry, along with John McCain and Bob Kerrey, had an editorial in the New York Times about the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam (“Moving On in Vietnam, but Remembering Its Lessons“). This coincided with President Obama’s visit to the country. Together, the three attempted to summarize the lessons they learned as veterans of the Vietnam War and as government officials.

I won’t say that I take all of what they wrote at face value, knowing that there are always realpolitiks in play.  China is reportedly upset with Obama’s visit, and the news that the U.S. will lift the ban on selling arms to Vietnam. However, the optimist within me wants to look on the bright side of things, including the fact that once hostile nations can attempt to overcome difficult pasts. It is at least somewhat hopeful that former adversaries can find enough common ground to form at least a working relationship (and sometimes more). As Kerry et al. wrote:

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A fourth and final lesson of the Vietnam conflict is playing out before our eyes: that with sufficient effort and will, seemingly unbridgeable differences can be reconciled. The fact that Mr. Obama is the third consecutive American president to visit Vietnam is proof that old enemies can become new partners.

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Looking to the future, we know that mutual interests, above all else, will drive our partnership with Vietnam. But it is strengthened, as well, by the natural affinities between our societies. These include family ties, a tendency toward optimism, a fierce desire for freedom and independence and a hard-earned appreciation that peace is far, far preferable to war.

 

Perhaps this is another reminder that the conditions of the present are not permanent. Nations and individuals who are currently at odds may find themselves as future allies. All is flux.

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The “Deep Roots” of War

The debate continues as to whether war extends deep into human pre-history. This tends to break down into two camps: (1) the “deep roots” advocates, who argue that inter-group aggression extends to the origins of our species (or perhaps even earlier), and (2) those who propose that hunter-gatherers were essentially peaceful until the advent of agriculture. 

On his website “Why Evolution is True,” Jerry Coyne has been summarizing the various critiques that deep-rooters like Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer have been piling on against the science writer John Horgan, who has argued that war is a recent innovation.

I think the reason for all the confusion is that the best way to resolve the debate is to have a systematic review of the archaeological record. Of course, that is very hard to do, since there are gaps in what we know about the past, and not all humans leave traces of their existence. But the public debates often encourage cherry-picking of the data, sometimes highlighting prehistoric groups that show signs of intergroup violence (and they did exist), or at other times highlighting peaceful groups (so did they!). Rarely is there a systematic, big-picture approach. 

In an essay I wrote last year, “Genocidal Altruists,” I took a different approach, arguing that our ancestors were complex. I cited the archaeologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli, who actually did attempt a systematic review. To quote myself… 

Continue reading →

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Deprived of Love

Human biologist (and friend) Inês Varela-Silva  wrote the following essay: “Can a lack of love be deadly?” It’s currently the most-read post at “The Conversation.” As she wrote:

“Deprivation comes in many shapes and forms: lack of food, diseases, maltreatment, and child abuse are some of the harms that come to mind. However, I would argue that deprivation of love can be just as deadly.”

I think she’s right. We take it for granted that kids need nutrients and a life relatively free from infection. But perhaps we sometimes overlook the idea that psychosocial deprivation is also inherently stressful. Please read the rest of her essay, where she discusses some of the history behind this research, human resilience and the ability to overcome early deprivation, and the personal side of things with the adoption of her daughter. 

 

Related: 

The Power of Love

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“My religion is kindness”

The Dalai Lama wrote this soon after September 11, 2001. I think it cuts across all faiths and religious traditions.

 

“Today the human soul asks the question: what can I do to preserve the beauty and the wonder of our world and to eliminate the anger and hatred — and the disparity that inevitably causes it — in that part of the world which I touch?

 Please seek to answer that question today, with all the magnificence that is you. What can you do today … this very moment? A central teaching in most spiritual traditions is: what you wish to experience, provide for another. Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience — in your own life, and in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source of that. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you wish to know that you are safe, cause another to know that they are safe. If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, help another to better understand. If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another. Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love. My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”

 

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The Destruction of Syria

There isn’t much to add. The scale of the destruction is difficult to comprehend. 

Homs, Syria

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The Allison Center for Peace

“Flowers are better than bullets.”       – Allison Krause, 1970

 

This week marked the 46th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State University. On May 4th 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired 67 shots at college students who were protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Four unarmed students were killed, while nine others were seriously injured.

A few months ago, I found a website named after Allison Krause, one of the young students killed that day. Just as this website is named after my brother Kevin, Allison’s younger sister, Laurel, created the NGO The Allison Center for Peace in honor of her memory and as a way to search for the truth for what happened that day.

In 1979, the relatives of the victims at Kent State received an out-of-court settlement from the state of Ohio and a “statement of regret and intentions” from Ohio officials. However, even today, they do not have all the answers. In 2012, they formally requested that the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague consider justice at Kent State. And this Wednesday, they asked that the FBI release whatever relevant documents they possess.  

Laurel Krause cited the British government’s apology for the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings in Northern Ireland as a possible model “for America to heal the wounds of Kent State.” There are parallels between Bloody Sunday and the Kent State incident, both involving government troops firing upon their own citizens. After a lengthy investigation and report, in 2010 British Prime Minister David Cameron had this to say:

“What happened should never, ever have happened. The families of those who died should not have had to live with the pain and hurt of that day, and a lifetime of loss. Some members of our armed forces acted wrongly. The government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the armed forces. And for that, on behalf of the government — and indeed our country — I am deeply sorry.”  

The families of the victims of Kent State are looking for more than “a statement of regret and intentions.” An apology and an honest accounting can both go a long way.  As I’ve written before, several governments have shown courage by confronting some of the more difficult parts of their past. In addition to Bloody Sunday, the Japanese government apologized for colonizing Korea, and the U.S. Senate apologized to African-Americans for slavery and segregation. My favorite example comes from 2007, when the Danish government apologized for the Viking raids of Ireland, which occurred 1,200 years earlier.

If an apology can be extended (and accepted) after a millennium, then perhaps there is no statute of limitations on confronting a difficult past, for understanding, or even for reconciliation. While others have warned that apologies and truth commissions are not a panacea, and that “confronting the past is ineluctably political,” it is clear that the families of Kent State should not have to wait 46 years for their wounds to heal.   

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Bacteria and Nuclear Weapons: The Boundaries of Our Existence

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”

-W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming (1919)

 

In his 1997 book “Full House,” the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould discussed the idea of progress in evolution. He noted that Darwin went back and forth over the idea, at times arguing that natural selection had the power to refine organisms and “tend to progress toward perfection” and at other times writing that “after long reflection, I cannot avoid the conviction that no innate tendency to progressive development exists” (p. 137 and 141).

Gould himself acknowledged that it certainly seems like life has progressed over the billions of years it has existed on earth:

“And yet, undeniably (even for such curmudgeons as me), a basic fact of the history of life – the basic fact, one might well say – seems to cry out for progress as the central trend and defining feature of life’s history. The first fossil evidence of life, from rocks some 3.5 billion years in age, consists only of bacteria, the simplest forms that could be preserved in the geological record. Now we have oak trees, praying mantises, hippopotamuses, and people. How could anyone deny that such a history displays progress above anything else?” (p. 145)

Continue reading →

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U.S. Attitudes Toward Refugees

Generally speaking, U.S. attitudes toward the idea of accepting refugees have not been very generous over time.

From Drew DeSilver at the Pew Research Center:

Pew Poll

And from Jeffrey Jones at Gallup:

Gallup.png