‘The Creation’ of Cooperation to Save Life on Earth

Review by Bill Doughty––

What do an evolutionary biologist/entomologist and Southern Baptist pastor have in common? 

E. O. Wilson attempts to find out in “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth” (W. W. Norton & Company, 2006). This is one of more than two dozen books Wilson wrote in his long lifetime. He died this week at 92.

He was one of the greatest American scientists in history.

“The Creation” may not be his most famous works –– such as “Sociobiology,” “The Ants,” “Consilience,” and (one of my favorites) “The Diversity of Life” –– but it’s one his most relevant today in its outreach to promote empathy, cooperation, and commitment to saving our environment in the face of climate change and other threats. 

Wilson, raised as a Baptist but converting to secular humanist, looks for common ground between religion and science.

On ways to “salvation” and unity:

“Does this difference in worldview separate us in all things? It does not. You and I and every other human being strive for the same imperatives of security, freedom of choice, personal dignity, and a cause to believe in that is larger than ourselves.”

On Nature = The Creation:

“Because we are part of it, the fate of the Creation is the fate of humanity.”

Chimborazo and Tungurahua, Ecuador (NASA)

On Fragility:

“Earth provides a self-regulating bubble that sustains us indefinitely without any thought or contrivance on our own. This protective shield is the biosphere, the totality of all life, creator of all air, cleanser of all water, manager of all soil, but itself a fragile membrane that barely clings to the face of the planet. Upon its delicate health we depend for every moment of our lives.”

On Human Impact:

“Yet humanity is already the first species in the history of life to become a geophysical force. We have spread thousands of toxic chemicals worldwide, appropriated 40 percent of the solar energy available for photosynthesis, converted almost all of the easily arable land, dammed most of the rivers, raised the planet sea level, and now, in a manner likely to get everyone’s attention like nothing else before it, we are close to running out of water. A collateral effect of all this frenetic activity is the continuing extinction of wild ecosystems, along with the species that compose them. This also happens to be the only human impact that is irreversible.”

Naval Hospital/Navy Medicine Readiness Training Command Bremerton’s Nature Trail helps preserve nature. (Douglas H Stutz)

On Commonality + Equilibrium = Balance

“Living nature is nothing more than the commonality of organisms in the wild state and the physical and chemical equilibrium their species generate through interaction with one another. But it is also nothing less than that commonality and equilibrium. The power of living Nature lies in sustainability through complexity. Destabilize it by degrading it to a simpler state, as we seem bent on doings and the result could be catastrophic. The organisms most affected are likely to be the largest and most complex, including human beings.”

On Passion for Learning:

“The basic ingredient for a love of learning is the same as for romantic love, or love of country, or of God: passion for a particular subject. Knowledge accompanied by pleasurable emotion stays with us. It jumps to the surface and, when summoned, triggers other memory linkages to create metaphor, the cutting edge of creative thought.”

Discovering Curiosity and Passion

Wilson’s curiosity as a lifelong teacher and student is contagious as he explores topics such as fire ants and West Indies plague ants, the pitchfork ant, wolverines, the Grizzly Bear Effect, Layson ducks, Biophilia, nature/nurture, bioblitzes and “the world’s most beautiful tree,” the Japanese maple.

A Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia team cleans a beach, Apr. 23, 2021.(SN Stevin Atkins)

Navy readers will be interested in what Wilson has to say about humans’ plundering and polluting of the oceans, issues the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard work together to address and combat.

He warns that we are in an epic period of extinction of species, on par with the end of the Mesozoic Era (the Age of Reptiles) and beginning of the Cenozoic Era (the Age of Mammals).

“The first five spasms took ten million years on average to repair by natural evolution. A new ten-million-year slump is unacceptable. Humanity must make a decision, and make it right now: conserve Earth’s natural heritage, or let future generations adjust to a biologically impoverished world.”

“Blinded by ignorance and self-absorption, humanity is destroying the Creation. There is still time to assume the stewardship of the natural world that we owe to future human generations.”

The great extinction of species is explained in the acronym HIPPO: Habitat loss, Invasive species, Pollution, over-Population, Over-harvesting:

“When a species declines toward extinction, not one but two or more factors are usually responsible. Thus overfishing in the sea with bottom drag nets (O) has simultaneously destroyed (H) the sea floor habitat on which bottom species such as cod and haddock depend. When an endangered bird or some other species is restricted to a single small population by habitat destruction (H), it becomes more susceptible to invasive predators and disease (I), pollution (P), and over harvesting (O). Much of the science of conservation biology is devoted to the teasing apart of these malign forces in order to weigh their importance, then to nullify them.”

But there is hope, starting with an innate love of nature and the natural world, what is now studied as Environmental Psychology and Conservation Psychology. Wilson says, “The affiliation has a moral consequence: the more we come to understand other life forms, the more our learning expands to include their vast diversity, and the greater the value we will place on them and, inevitability, on ourselves.”

U.S Coast Guard crew members assigned to the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Kukui help prepare Layson ducks for translocation to Kure Atoll, Hawaii Sept. 3, 2014. The U.S. Coast Guard partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington State, The Wildlife Center and the State of Hawaii to translocate 28 endangered Laysan ducks to Kure Atoll, an ideal habitat for the ducks. (Staff Sgt. Christopher Hubenthal)

Chapter IV is titled “Teaching the Creation.” Wilson writes, “The only way to save the diversity of life and come to peace with nature is through a widely shared knowledge of biology and what the findings of that science imply for the human condition.”

Wilson taught biology at Harvard, and he learned five key principles to teaching: 

• Teach top-down –– Start with the bigger picture and make it relevant to students, then peel away down to the foundation.
• Reach outside biology –– Embrace the diverse disciplines in biology and discoveries in emerging interdisciplinary interconnectedness.
• Focus on problem solving –– Be more problem-oriented, and less discipline-oriented as you look for synthesis and new ways of thinking.
• Cut deep and travel far –– Specialize and commit (“For future biologists, I offer the same advice I gave hundreds of students at Harvard regardless of their career plans. As soon as you feel comfortable doing so, choose a part of biology to which you then commit yourself, and treat the rest of biology as general education. Trust your instincts, press on … follow your heart.")
• Commit yourself –– Return to passion and love for the subject and find “mentors to trust, heroes to emulate, and accomplishments that are real and enduring” to further develop self-confidence.

I recently listened to an interview with E.O. Wilson on a science podcast, and he encouraged field trips for young biology scientists-to-be rather than rote learning of math, chemistry, and physics. He acknowledges in “The Creation,” that passion can come “in a multiplicity of unpredictable forms,” including from caring people and, no doubt, from books. Field trips provide the bigger picture, find interconnectedness, solve problems, help choose a part of biology, and achieve commitment to a passion.

A Smithsonian biologist holds a lizard collected at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, May 8, 2014. (MC1 Eric Dietrich)

Naturally (no pun intended), he encourages introducing children to nature at an early age. “Provide opportunities to explore the outdoors and its surrogates in zoo and museum exhibits. Let the child search, alone or in small, like-minded groups. Let him disturb nature a bit, on his own and without coaching. Provide field guides, binoculars, and even microscopes, at home if possible and at least at school … Let him learn at his own pace. At the end of this process he may choose a career in law, marketing, or the military, but he will be a naturalist all his life, and thank you for it.”

In a brief but fascinating aside related to field trips, Wilson shares a story about visiting the cellblock where his great-grandfather had been imprisoned on Georges Island, Boston Harbor, for being a Confederate naval blockade runner captured in 1863 at the entrance of Mobile Bay.

Wilson participated in an extensive chronicling of species around the Boston Harbor Islands.

USS Constitution greets USS Carr in Boston Harbor during a Battle of Midway commemoration. (Kathryn Macdonald)

A Personal Journey

This book is addressed directly to religious people and indirectly to people who understand the world through science. E.O. Wilson explains biology within the laws of what’s known about chemistry and physics, but he is sensitive to the beliefs of others in his search for common ground in the ethics of protecting the Creation.

Wilson writes, “To be a naturalist is not just an activity [such as bird-watching] but an honorable state of mind. Those who have expressed its value and protected living Nature are among America’s heroes: John James Audubon, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, William Beebe, Ado Leopold, Rachel Carson, Roger Tory Peterson.” Of course, E.O. Wilson is part of that pantheon.

He concludes “The Creation” with a brief chapter, again a personal message to his imaginary “pastor,” offering a way to see past vast differences:

“What are we to do? Forget the differences, I say. Meet on common ground. That might not be as difficult as it seems at first. When you think about it, our metaphysical differences have remarkably little effect own the conduct of our separate lives. My guess is that you and I are about equally ethical, patriotic, and altruistic. We are products of a civilization that rose from both religion and the science-based Enlightenment. We would gladly serve on the same jury, fight the same wars, sanctify human life with the same intensity. And surely we also share a love of the Creation.”

His advice resonates particularly well in the aftermath of the insurgency of 1/6/2021, and is worth hearing at the end of a tumultuous year and beginning of a potentially fraught 2022.

Wilson's appeals to everyone to get on board are woven throughout this books.

In a blurb for another Wilson book, “Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life,” Stephen Greenblatt writes:

“Edward O. Wilson possesses a rare, almost unique, combination of immense scientific knowledge and deep humane intelligence. Looking around him at the beloved natural world he has done so much to understand and taking the measure of the massive damage to it caused by human stupidity and greed, he has every reason to succumb to despair. But ‘Half-Earth’ is not a bitter jeremiad. It is a brave expression of hope, a visionary blueprint for saving the planet.”

Greenblatt is the author of “The Swerve,” reviewed Dec. 27 on this blog.

A bull elk leads his heard into the woods on Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif., July 17, 2012. (Sgt. Michael Connors)

Top photo by Christopher Larsen.

A Not-Burned Book Helped Create USA

Review by Bill Doughty––

Thomas Jefferson –– America’s first scientist/philosopher president –– reached for a book to hone his thinking about “the pursuit of happiness” in drafting the Declaration of Independence. The book was Titus Lucretius Carus’s “De rerum natura,” “On the Nature of Things” (c 60 BCE).

On his bookshelf Jefferson had five copies of Lucretius’s homage to Epicureanism, a philosophy promoting freedom from fear, including fear from death. The book focuses on enjoyment of life, especially based in reason and critical thinking.

It’s remarkable that copies of “On the Nature of Things” made it through the purge of book burnings in Europe during the Inquisition and Dark Ages and then made its way into Jefferson’s hands centuries later. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stephen Greenblatt tells how the book, as well as its powerful messages, survived in “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011).

This is a book about courage. The courage to face fears to find –– and accept –– truth.

In that sense, it meets the criteria laid out by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. M. M. Gilday on the Navy’s Professional Reading Program website, “Read Well to Lead Well.” In order “to outthink our competitors, we must study and apply lessons we’ve learned from our past, Gilday says. It is critically important for our Navy to be a learning organization. And one of the very best ways to do that is to foster an environment where every Sailor deepens their level of understanding and learning.”

Deeper understanding comes, in part, through studying history. While “Swerve” will likely never be part of a CNO’s NPRP list, it certainly dovetails with some of the titles endorsed by Navy and Marine Corps leaders like Mullen, Mattis, Stavridis, and Richardson to enhance critical thinking. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley encourages reading books about history and philosophy and learning the perspectives of others.

In “Swerve,” Greenblatt explores the earliest Western seeds of critical thinking from Ancient Greece, how those seeds took root in the Roman Empire, and what it took to reap a harvest of knowledge centuries ago, eventually informing humanists like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. Epicurus was one of the seed planters.

Jefferson statue at U.S. State Department (Sgt. Amber I. Smith)

Jefferson considered Greek philosopher Epicurus his muse: “I am,” he wrote, “an Epicurean.” Roman Lucretius reached back to Epicurus and another philosopher, Democritus, for his inspiration too.

Lucretius’s “On the Nature of Things,” amazingly explores concepts of atoms, chaos theory, and natural selection –– all modern accepted theories of life, science, and laws of the universe. Epicurus and Democritus conceived that all matter was made of invisible, indestructible, and infinite particles. Those ancient Greek thinkers called the tiny particles “atoms.”

While the power of atoms can cause fear, understanding of atoms can be a joy, not just to nuclear engineers, but to anyone who wants the intellectual freedom of knowledge and wisdom. From Greenblatt’s “Swerve”:

“In constant motion, atoms collide with each other, Epicurus reasoned, and in certain circumstances, they form larger and larger bodies. The largest observable bodies –– the sun and the moon –– are made of atoms, just as are human beings and water-flies and grains of sand. There are no supercategories of matter; no hierarchy of elements. Heavenly bodies are not divine beings who shape our destiny for good or ill, nor do they move through the void under the guidance of gods: they are simply part of the natural order, enormous structures of atoms subject to the same principles of creation and destruction that govern everything that exists. And if the natural order is unimaginably vast and complex, it is nonetheless possible to understand something of its basic constitutive elements and its universal laws. Indeed, such understanding is one of human life’s deepest pleasures.

This pleasure is perhaps the key to comprehending the powerful impact of Epicurus’s philosophy: it was as if he unlocked for his followers an inexhaustible source of gratification hidden within Democritus’s atoms … And the enlightenment he offered did not require sustained scientific inquiry. You did not need a detailed grasp of the actual laws of the physical universe; you needed only to comprehend that there is a hidden natural explanation for everything that alarms or eludes you. That explanation will inevitably lead you back to atoms. If you can hold on to and repeat to yourself the simplest fact of existence –– atoms and void and nothing else –– your life will change. You will no longer fear Jove’s wrath, whenever you hear a peal of thunder, or suspect that someone has offended Apollo, whenever there is an outbreak of influenza. And you will be freed from a terrible affliction –– what Hamlet, many centuries later, described as ‘the dread of something after death,/The undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveller returns.’”

Lucretius

Lucretius wrote “On the Nature of Things” in Latin hexameters. His poetry is rich with “verbal textures,” “subtle rhythms,” and “cunning precision and poignancy of its imagery,” according to Greenblatt, who takes us back not only to Greece and Rome, but also 15th century Germany and England. We meet characters like reformer priest Jan Hus, theologian Jerome of Prague, and Dominican friar Giordano Bruno. All three were burned at the stake for heresy against the Church.

Yet, despite people- and book-burnings, Lucretius’s enlightened work survived destruction. That was thanks to people like calligrapher Poggio Bracciolini, the fascinating hero of this story, who worked for a disgraced flamboyant pope who was eventually imprisoned. Poggio’s rescue of “On the Nature of Things” is fraught with intrigue in a time of great superstition, persecution, torture, and death to nonbelievers. That the book survived “is something one could be tempted to call a miracle.”

Botticelli's "Birth of Venus," inspired by Lucretius: "For you the ocean levels laugh, the sky is calmed and glows with diffused radiance."

“On the Nature of Things” and Lucretian love of beauty and pleasure inspired other great thinkers: Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon, Galileo, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Einstein, among hundreds of artists during the Renaissance, including Botticelli.

Freedom in art and through reason became an antidote to a “toxic form of superstition, combining in equal measure absurd arrogance and absurd fear.”

Lucretius embraced science and cold reality of the laws of nature. He envisioned unexpected, unpredictable movement of atoms and codes within matter –– the “swerve.” We see in his philosophy, a garden of ideas about relativity, chaos theory, DNA, natural selection, and the punctuated equilibrium mechanism for evolution. His science wasn’t perfect, but it was perfectly forward-thinking for his time.

While the book and philosophies it describes are deeply rooted in Western thought, there are stunning similarities to Eastern thinking in Epicureanism and its contemporaneous philosophy Stoicism. According to Professor Richard Jenkyns, Epicureanism, “often caricatured as a religion of sensuous self-indulgence, is in reality rather austere.” Jenkyns wrote the introduction to the Penguin Classics “The Nature of Things” by Lucretius (translated by A.E. Stallings, 2007), “If you were looking for an analogy in modern spirituality, you might turn to Buddhism.”

Epicurus

At points in Western history, before and even after Epicurus and Lucretius, people generally believed the sun revolved around the earth, that the earth and sun would last forever, and that humans were given “dominion” over the earth and therefore had a right to plunder the planet and damage the environment.

“In a universe so constituted, Lucretius argued, there is no reason to think that the earth or its inhabitants occupy a central place, no reason to set humans apart from all other animals, no hope of bribing or appeasing the gods, no place for religious fanaticism, no call for ascetic self-denial, no justification for dreams of limitless power or perfect security, no rationale for wars of conquest or self-aggrandizement, no possibility of triumphing over nature, no escape from the constant making and unmaking and remaking of forms. On the other side of anger at those who either peddled false visions of security or incited irrational fears of death, Lucretius offered a feeling of liberation and the power to stare down what had once seemed so menacing. What human beings can and should do, he wrote, is to conquer their fears, accept the fact that they themselves and all the things they encounter are transitory, and embrace the beauty and pleasure of the world.”

In the current era of conspiracies, insurgencies, hubris, and questioning of norms and rules, there is great relevancy in the ancient insights of Epicurus and Lucretius: happiness over anger, pleasure over pain, love over hate.

Today “Epicurean” has come to identify a love of beauty and sensual pleasure in living and especially in food. U.S. Navy chefs and cooks have competed in Epicurean culinary competitions, for example.

Naval Hospital Bremerton's Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Anh Vu and Culinary Specialist 3rd Class Timothy Mitchell participate in the Battling Chef challenge in the Armed Forces Culinary Arts Competition, May 4, 2019, an epicurean event with culinary specialists from varied service branches showcasing their skills in such categories as desserts, garnish displays, chili, gumbo, wings, ribs, gourmet burgers, and a Battling Chef challenge to a panel of judges. (Douglas H Stutz)

Epicurus and Lucretius set the table, so to speak, for a harvest of new ideas that would lead to a Declaration of Independence and the phrase, “pursuit of happiness” as a right later to be guaranteed in the Constitution.

Jefferson, a dedicated botanist, saw the wisdom of Epicurean insights planted in Lucretius’s “On the Nature of Things” and how those liberating ideas could grow a living democracy –– a united republic –– and a government of “We the People.”

The Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon marches in front of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial , April 12, 2014. (Sgt. Bryan Nygaard)

Of interest to SECNAVs and CNOs: Jefferson also imagined a global maritime strategy for the new nation. He envisioned the development of submarines. And he deployed the first American naval expeditionary force with both Sailors and Marines to fight terrorism overseas.

Jefferson’s ideas of nature –– one of his favorite words, and a word he frequently capitalized as Nature –– led eventually to emancipation and the expansion of civil rights. According to scholar Charles A. Miller in “Jefferson and Nature: An Interpretation” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), “The natural rights doctrines of the antislavery movement sprang directly from the Declaration of Independence.”

Although Jefferson had his own personal ethics issues, especially about equality and slavery, he can be seen as a citizen of his time, where ideas of freedom often outran the realities of culture and society. Yet he helped create a country where Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms could grow; autocracy, authoritarianism and book-burning could be rejected; beauty can be appreciated and the “pursuit of happiness” could flourish.

(A post about "On the Nature of Things" –– "De rerum natura" –– follows this blogpost.

Navy Reads: ‘De Rerum Natura’

Review by Bill Doughty––

Here’s a book from the canon of world literature that should be of great interest to critical thinkers. It also has lots for sailors to smile over or wonder about. The book is “De rerum natura” (On the Nature of Things) by Titus Lucretius Carus (c55-c99 BCE). It was inspired by ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC).

Various scholars have translated the “De rerum natura” over the years. I found two versions to be thought-provoking and rewarding: by A.E. Stallings (Penguin Classics, 2007) and Frank O. Copley (W.W. Norton, 1977).

Both are very different in their approaches. While Copley sticks as much as possible to literal forms and strict English iambic pentameter from the Latin hexameter, Stallings stretches her imagination in rhyme. She translates not only the words but also the meanings and images Lucretius wishes to convey, and she does so poetically.

Each translator’s work has its benefits. But if you have time to read only one version, I recommend Stallings; hers has an easier flow and is often a beautiful read –– sad, funny, and poignant.

There’s plenty of seafaring imagery for naval enthusiasts since both Greek Epicurus and Roman Lucretius lived in a time of wind-powered navies, sailors, and fleets.

Lucretius writes of storms at sea, ocean tides, narrow straits, and shipwrecks, either directly or as metaphors as he explores the nature of the universe, human evolution, and the physical interactions of earth, wind, water, and fire, not to mention the nature of the sun and the moon. He has some insights about perception and about ships and sailors at sea.

And, upon reflection, he sees the universe in a puddle of water.

The scudding ship on which we sail seems to be standing fast,

While yet a craft at anchor will appear to sail on past.

And it is, rather, hills and fields that seem sternwards to fly

When really the ship is rowing, or under sail goes skimming by.

The stars all seem to be at rest, nailed in the vaults of heaven,

But are perpetually in motion, since once they have arisen,

Returning to their setting place, on far-flung paths they go

Across the sky from end to end, with bodies all aglow.

The sun and moon seem likewise to be frozen still, but prove

On observation, actually, to both be on the move.

From far off, mountains jutting from the middle of the sea

With space enough between for fleets to pass through easily,

Seem nevertheless to be linked up into a single isle.

Dizzy children think the columns in a peristyle

Are going round, and that the entire court is in a spin,

Once they themselves stop turning, so that they almost begin

To believe the house threatens to tumble in about their ears.

And then, when first above the tops of mountains Nature rears

The beaming sun all red with flickering flames, the sun appears

To be so close it’s singeing them with fire. Those mountains are

Perhaps two thousand arrow-shots away from us –– not far ––

Maybe even as close as a mere five hundred javelin-casts.

And yet between the mountains and the sun there lies a vast

Expanse of ocean strewn beneath the sweeping shores of heaven,

And also myriads of countries stretching in between

Peopled by the sundry tribes of animals and men.

And yet puddles of water that upon a paved street linger

Between the cobblestones, although no deeper than a finger,

Offer us a downward glimpse into the earth as deep

As the yawn of heaven overhead is towering and steep,

So that it seems you’re peering down into the cloudy skies,

Or you behold a moon and stars – you can’t believe your eyes ––

Buried underneath the earth… IV:387-432

Another example of Stallings’s Lucretian poetry related to the maritime domain: “…science in the dark and murky storm to steer Into calm waters and safe harbor, where the sky was clear.” Here’s more from Book VI:

It’s easy from the earlier explanations to see why

What Greeks call ‘blowers’– waterspouts – descend out of the sky

Onto the water. For, at times, a kind of column falls

Out of the sky and touches the sea. And whipped up by the squalls 

Of heavy, hissing blasts, the sea around it seethes and brawls.

And any bark that’s caught out in the hurricane is tossed,

Pitching and yawing on the waves, in danger of being lost.

Sometimes this happens when a stirred-up force of wind at first

Attempts to rend a cloud, but when it cannot make it burst

Presses it down instead, so that it drops upon the seas

Like a column let down from the heavens, as though, by degrees,

Something inside the cloud reached towards the water from above –

As if a fist on outstretched arm pushed down a cloudy glove.

And when the force rips open the cloud at last and it bursts free

On the waves, it unleashes an amazing boiling of the sea,

For as it’s lowering, the whirlwind twists, and it drags down

The pliant substance of the cloud along with it, but soon

As it thrusts the pregnant cloud on the face of the waters, in a flash

It plunges itself in the waves, and roils them up with a monstrous crash… VI:431-442

Lucretius explores ideas in science that were, while not always accurate, revolutionary for their time –– about the universe, the origin of the Earth, and the development of species, including the human race. He explores the evolution of morals, ethics, psychology, and philosophy:

But if you’d steer your life by a philosophy that’s true,

The way to be the wealthiest of men is to eschew

High living, and be contented in the mind –– for there has never

Been a poverty of modest means. People yearned, however,

To be renowned and to be powerful –– that way, they thought

They built their fortunes upon solid ground. But all for naught,

Since as men clawed to the pinnacle of office, all the time

They strewed their path with perils. And at the apex of their climb,

Often Envy would blast them like a thunderbolt, to fell

Them with disdain and hurl them in the pit of hateful Hell. 

And since, like lightning, Envy loves to singe the summits best,

And anything that raises itself up higher than the rest,

It is far preferable to live in peace and to obey

Than to wish to reign in power and hold whole kingdoms in your sway.

Let others wear themselves out all for nothing, sweating blood,

Battling their way along ambition’s narrow road

Because their wisdom smacks of others’ lips, and they pursue

Things that they only know at second-hand, rather than through

Their own senses. For their way of life is just as wrong

Today as it will be tomorrow, and has been all along.

Thus the sad stories of the death of kings: for toppled down

Lay ancient majesty of throne and sceptre; and the crown,

Besmirched with gore, that once had graced the highest head of all,

Trod underneath the rabble’s feet, lamented its great fall ––

For men are eager to trample underfoot what they before

Had held in too much awe. And mankind was reduced once more

To chaos, the very bottom of the barrel, as each sought

Power and glory only for himself. Later, some taught

Men to establish a constitution, set magistrates in place,

That people would want to live by laws; because the human race,

Weary of leading all their days in violence, bled dry

From constant clashes, were all the more eager to put by

Their own will and submit to the rigid rule of law. Each man

Was ready, out of rage, to avenge himself more fiercely than

Would be allowed under today’s impartial laws, and hence

People were sick to death of spending their lives in violence. V:1117-1150

For comparison, here’s part of that passage as translated by Copley. Lucretius’s insights are especially on point in 2021, as they were decades before the Christian era and as published by Copley 44 years ago.

Men lustily trampled what they had vastly feared.

Life sank to the depths, the dregs, back to confusion,

With everyone wanting top rank and highest power.

Then, here and there, men learned to choose officials,

Establish constitutions, and live by law.

For man grew weary: the life of violence

And hatred left him sick, and more disposed

Freely to choose the yoke of law and statute.

For angered men kept calling for revenge

More savage than just law will now permit;

This made man sicken of life by violence. V:1140-1150

In his thoughtful introduction to his translation of “De rerum natura,” Copley delves deep into Epicurean philosophy as captured by Lucretius.

Copley writes the following, which is also extremely relevant in the Trump era and after the insurrection of January 1, 2021 and the attack on the U.S. Capitol: “Disillusionment, thwarted ambition, treachery, and fickleness of popular favor –– all these could turn the happy politician (if ever there were such) into a sick and embittered individual, full of guilt, rancor, and ill will.”

Lucretius’s masterpiece is incomplete. It ends, again apropos for our era, in a time of a pandemic (of plague). What is left out? What is yet to be discovered?

At times, “Nature of Things,” in addition to being incomplete, is inconsistent and repetitive. But it is also indispensable for a critical thinker’s bookshelf.

(Photos: MC2 Krystina Coffey; Pixabay; MSgt. Kendra M. Owenby; MC3 Jack C. Aistrup; LCpl Stormy Mendez; NASA)

‘Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury’

Review by Bill Doughty––

“Wildland” by Evan Osnos (Farrar, Straus, and Giraux, 2021) is a deceptively easy-to-read roadmap of a book, a journalist’s journey to three hometowns to discover the reasons for the rifts that rend American culture today.

Osnos takes readers with him to Clarksburg, West Virginia; Chicago; and Greenwich, Connecticut. We meet people in poor and rich neighborhoods, and we learn about the history of discontent and division that has been driving our politics. Sounds simple, but this is a powerful and necessary book.

Clearly, the most poignant story in this book is about former U.S. Marine Sidney Muller and his fellow West Virginian battle buddy Herman Lubbe. They served together in Sangin, Afghanistan, and their ordeals and near-death experiences are vividly portrayed in Chapter eight, “Getting Loaded.”

U.S. Marines with 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 6, conduct a security patrol in Sangin, Helmand province, Afghanistan, Sept. 9, 2012. (DVIDS)

For Lubbe, life changed forever in the spring of 2011, midway through the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

“Lubbe was on patrol when a marine near him stepped on a bomb the tore off his legs from the thigh down. In the chaos after the explosion, Lubbe crouched over the stricken marine and started to light a smoke grenade that might be able to guide an incoming helicopter. That’s when another marine stepped on another IED. This second blast blew Lubbe into the air. When he landed, he felt a wave of pain and heat settle, like a blanket, across his face. The explosion had torn open his chin and nearly amputated his right ear. Down below, his legs were a tangle of broken bones and flesh. A lieutenant crouched over him. Lubbe pleaded for morphine, and then blacked out. He spent the next two years at Walter Reed Medical Center. Doctors repaired his face and ear, and mended his legs. He learned to walk again. He felt lucky; most of his fellow patients had no legs.”

For Muller, life changed forever after he left the Marine Corps, when he suffered PTSD –– anxiety, insomnia, and anger-control issues.

Muller abused alcohol and pills. He took opioids, such as Percocet, and drank bottles of prescription cough syrup. He lost his driver’s license and opportunities for jobs. “He had come to believe his mistake was not joining the Marines, but leaving them,” Osnos writes.

Osnos reports the horrific details –– as only a journalist can, of what came next in Muller’s life, including four murders. And he adds context in a heartbreaking wake of destruction: “It turned it over in my mind for a long time, considering the sheer waste of it all…”

“When Muller unraveled, nobody caught him –– not his family, his hometown, or his country. It was a conspiracy of failures.”

Osnos explores other failures, too, in “Wildland”: the failure of the coal industry in West Virginia to protect the environment and provide a sustainable economy; the failure of Chicago to deal with guns and violent crime on its streets; and the failure of Greenwich, like a lot of communities, to deal with inequality, corruption, and housing problems. Failures of unfulfilled promises.

Out of the failures arose a feeling of fear, suspicion, and even persecution that connects some areas of the country. “Black Chicagoans and white Appalachians had come to share a sensation that was calcifying in America’s political culture –– a feeling of being trapped by an undertow of economics and history of being ill-served by institutions, of being estranged from a political machinery that was refined, above all, to serve itself.”

Self-serving politicians are then attracted to any means to stay in power, which is alarming to anyone committed to supporting and protecting the Constitution. “Compromise” and “cooperation” become dirty words. Norms and ethics are thrown out. Democracy is subverted, and tyranny is embraced.

Osnos’s journey is bookended primarily by two attacks: September 11, 2001 and January 6, 2021. But he also takes a winding road through history to examine potholes that slow progress and grow division, including: Barry Goldwater, Tea Party, Pat Buchanan, Rodney King riots, NRA, Confederate monuments, Birtherism, police shootings, Kanye West, and the Covid pandemic.

The pandemic caused people to choose sides: science, masks, and vaccines on one side –– conspiracies, misinformation, and disinformation on the other side. “The fault lines in America’s political coherence, which had been expanded for years, broke wide open,” Osnos says. Compared to 9/11, “American unity had given way to bitter rivalries …”

Violent rhetoric by politicians, including President Trump, became normalized.

The election of President Joe Biden in 2020 was verified by election officials, certified by the states, recognized by the courts, and confirmed by Attorney General Bill Barr and other Republican and Democratic leaders. But not by Trump, who called his supporters from across the nation to Washington D.C. and directed them toward the Capitol, saying, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country at all.” Osnos notes that Trump used the word “fight” twenty times in his remarks on the morning of Jan. 6.

Thousands of Trump supporters, some carrying Confederate flags, assaulted the Capitol and attempted a coup. They erected a gallows and hanging rope. They called for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s head and trashed her office. And they searched for Vice President Pence, shouting “Hang Mike Pence!” They injured and killed Capitol Police officers.

Osnos was there.

In his superb reporter’s voice, he speaks with some of the rioters and then explains in “Wildland” both their actions and their motives, using their own words. He asks them where they get their information. He asked them about their die-hard support for Trump. One person he spoke with was Stacie Dunbar of Seneca Missouri, who said, “I did this for my kids. I have a son in the Navy, and Trump’s done more for the military than any president ever has.”

Babbitt

Osnos briefly examines the life and death of Ashlii Babbitt, who was shot while trying to enter a window of the Capitol. He sees similarities with former Marine and Afghanistan War veteran Sidney Muller.

“Babbitt’s fortunes had followed the course of the country’s. In 2002, after graduating from high school, she had been drawn to the military, much as Sidney Muller had, in pursuit of a purpose larger than herself. Babbitt enlisted in the Air Force and was assigned to guard the gates at air bases around the world. She served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates. She was discharged in 2016… her debts piled up.

“As her financial life deteriorated, she poured more of her energy into politics. She filled her social-media channels with paeans to QAnon and Trump, and rants against immigration, drugs, and Democrats…

“In its particulars, Ashlii Babbitt’s life was an uncanny reflection of the population that stormed the Capitol the day. After police had arrested more than a hundred of them, patterns emerged. Nearly 20 percent had served in the military, according to an analysis by NPR. And nearly 60 percent had a history of financial trouble…”

(A more recent study by George Washington University shows that the number of active duty service members and veterans is closer to 12 percent, but the study shows other troubling information related to the U.S. military and extremist groups, as reported by Military Times.)

Lincoln and Seward

Osnos reflects on why “Donald Trump’s insurrection failed” and how close it came to succeeding.

The preservation of democracy depends on enough good people willing to put country ahead of self.

“When I paused to consider just how far the coup progressed,” Osnos says, “it often put me in mind of an observation from the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward: ‘There was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare.’”

People who love good books will be pleased with some of Osnos’s references, many touching on the rise of autocracy and threat of tyranny –– works by: Hannah Arendt, Anne Applebaum, Phil Klay, Susan Jacoby, Rick Perlstein, Norman Mailer, Martha Nussbaum, Joanne B. Freeman, and Wendell Berry.

U.S. Marine Corps veteran 2nd Lt. Phil Klay, signs his book 'Redeployment' as fans bring the book to him at the Marine Corps Exchange aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., March 11, 2015. Klay’s book offers a dozen short stories based on the perspectives and views of Iraq veterans. (LCpl. Nathaniel S. McAllister)

These authors will help anyone have the widest possible rear-view mirror to see the road we’ve been on toward division in our country, up to and including the attempted coup of 1/6. They also give hope and inspiration to patriots dedicated to defending the Constitution.

Evan Osnos has written a compelling work of contemporary and contextual history in “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury” to help us get to a final destination of understanding –– and accountability.

Top photo: The U.S. Flag at the Capitol building flies at half-staff for fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, Jan. 11, 2021. Sicknick sacrificed his life to protect members of Congress during the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Devlin Drew)