Three more by Lapham: Philanthropy, Spies, and Disaster.

Lapham’s Quarterly VIII-3: Philanthropy (2015) There are two main themes: you should give alms or other assistance to those who need it; and you should give alms or other assistance to those who deserve it. This collection offers argument to support both principles, but on the whole, those who wish to limit their philanthropy to the deserving tend to concoct self-serving rationalisations to avoid giving anything. There are also accounts showing us what it’s like to be at the giving or receiving end, which range from the amusing to the harrowing.
     Anthropologically speaking, humans have survived and thrived best when they collaborated, and have kept accounts more in terms of ability than performance. The golden rule applies as much to sharing one’s wealth as to any other aspect of our lives. ****

 Lapham’s Quarterly IX-1: Spies (2016) Spying is as old as human conflict. “Intel” has determined the outcome of battles and wars. But success in spycraft appears to be random. Too many things can change between acquisition and delivery, quite apart from the inevitable defects of error, lack of context, and limited scope. Spies are traitors, hence we despise them even as we use thme. And reliance on spycraft as a tool of government fosters paranoia, which renders rational calculation difficult. For paranoia suffers from the prime weakness of all logic-based attitudes: logic is no better than the premises on which we use it. It’s garbage in, garbage out.

     These, and other like ruminations, were prompted by this collection, which has the rather sad effect of melancholy. For if we cannot trust each other, we cannot live together. ****

Lapham’s Quarterly IX-2: Disaster (2016) Whether caused by human error or malice, or by natural accidents, disasters shift our common enterprises into new directions, and sometimes completely change them. Soon after their effects have subsided to a pre-catastrophic level, we forget the perils that threatened our existence. Our preparations for the next disaster diminish as the memories of the last one fade. Eventually, we resent the cost of maintaining the defenses, and the next disaster’s destruction is, once again, greater than it could have been. – That’s the general thesis that emerges from these accounts of the sometimes unspeakable horrors we visit on each other or that are visited upon us.

     This collection was assembled four years before the covid pandemic upset all our plans. The records of past disasters show that our responses to covid-19 are simply the human responses to any disasters. Pity for the victims, help offered, sometimes heroic sacrifice, as well as denial, suspicion of conspiracies, blaming of the outsiders, rage at the authorities who must do the unwelcome work of constraining our choices, we find all these in the record. When it comes to disasters, only the details differ. Our behaviour repeats. Which is, I suppose, one reason that we wisely nod our heads and mumble cliches about not learning from experience. ****