Unavoidable Connections

There was a headline in the March 31 New York Times that bothered me:

“Can We Do Without the Mideast?”

It was the title for the lead article in a special section on energy and the topic was, of course, oil.

And we should ... do without the Mideast’s oil. No question.

But we should not, and indeed cannot, do without the Mideast. The Mideast is where what we call civilization began. It is where our species developed agriculture and alphabets, to say nothing of zeros (without which it would not be possible to calculate the national debt).

We can’t do without Asia or Europe or Latin America either. Every tribe and nation contributes to who we are. Especially us, the United States, the most polyglot of countries. There is an interdependent web of culture (and Facebook) that ties each to each, informs our fashions and music, poetry and politics.

It is not possible for any of us to be insular, no matter how much we (or the New York Times) might think it desirable.

Just an idle comment on an early spring day.

Cheers.