Random Thoughts

After a thoroughly delightful visit with our house guest for a few days, life may now return to normal and the pursuance of tidbits from the internet. We have tons of information fed to us on a daily basis. Some is useful. Some is too biased to use. Some is “preaching to the choir.” Most important, this information often provokes further independent thought and consideration..

For example I ran across a piece praising the contribution of Western Civilization to the collective benefit of the world in a wide range of areas. The author held the view that if the offerings of the Western world were denied to all peoples it would be tragic. Suffering and deprivation, widespread in the third world, would be even greater than it is now. So called “Western” nations, mostly with democratic governments of one sort or another, have been the purveyors of assistance, invention, and innovation to populations world-wide.

A quick glance at a World Almanac substantiates his assertion. It doesn’t take a genius in statistical analysis to quantify the results. Obviously our advances in scientific fields have a trickle down affect on humans generally. When citing specific examples, one of the more dramatic was during the Indonesia tsunami event. In that circumstance, the US and other countries were able to furnish immediate and massive efforts of relief for huge numbers of people affected by the tragedy. I would imagine the presence of a fully equipped hospital ship and supply vessels flying the stars and stripes would be most welcome if you had just lost your home and all else and were injured. These vital port calls were made in response to need and not political expediency.

African residents living in what we would consider squalor have had death rates in the millions over the years as a result of mosquito borne malaria. As a result of Western science many millions now use bed netting permeated with DDT to ward off these insects. If you have lost family members and friends to this insidious plague, the results of western technology are unquestionably most welcome.

The extraction of $100 a barrel oil in the Middle East is only possible with the techniques developed in the Western World and with the on site assistance of technicians and other experienced workers. Without the Western supplied infrastructure to turn raw iron ore into pipe and the other equipment necessary for recovery of subterranean deposits, the wealth of the nations involved would disappear. Not even a Prius will run on goat’s milk.

Certain characteristics of Western society provide the atmosphere in which our ability to contribute to the world at large may exist. Among them is non-theocratic rule, promotion of individual initiative, rationalism, equality, human rights, property rights and most important, liberty. Even the concept of abolition of slavery was of Western invention. The African tribes which practiced this despicable concept held no interest in bringing it to a halt.

We are constantly lectured by the rest of the world for our imagined failures when in point of fact these diatribes are most often based upon jealousies of our hard won progress. The West has advantages which came about by toil and determination to live up to the God given responsibilities we have been assigned. One of the authors I read expressed it best: “The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems . . . ”

In His abiding love,

Cecil Moon