Consumption’s stranglehold
Frank Trentmann makes the point that the “ecological rucksack” that we seem to need to extract the maximum enjoyment from our briefly flickering candle is so heavy that neither we nor the planet can bear it much longer (13 January). However, it’s very unlikely that virtue through deprivation will ever catch on in this era of plenty, where our concept of global equality is limitless growth in order for the third world to catch up with our extravagances.
In the same issue, economist Wolfgang Streeck warns that the imminent death of capitalism will be marked by a period of decay reminiscent of the decline of the Roman empire. Trentmann, however, takes the more optimistic view that a loosely defined consortium of states and social movements, together with motivated individuals, has the opportunity to turn things around.
Many Guardian readers would prefer to share Trentmann’s view, though, like myself, they see little or no prospect of this happening without at least a hint of the cataclysm feared by Streeck. The merchants of consumption have too strong a stranglehold. We must hope that by experiencing the worst we may be inspired to seek the best: the Age of Trump, should we survive it, might open unseen doors to the future.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
The genetics of culture
As I read Kwame Anthony Appiah’s long read on western culture (18 November), which discussed Edward Burnett Tylor and Matthew Arnold’s treatises, I realised, as a biochemist, that his attempts to hybridise their ideas were reflected in the development of the human genome.
It has been recognised that all human genomes are almost identical, so we all express the same genes for proteins. However, this only accounts for about 25% of our DNA: the rest is code for molecules involved in regulatory mechanisms that turn genes on and off, as well as remnants of redundant genes from our ancestors going back 3.5m years.
Thus, our DNA reflects our common ancestry, evolving from a wide variety of organisms since life formed on Earth. So fundamentally, Appiah’s concept of a common core of values and cultures is based on a common genome that has been acted upon by local factors in different parts of the world, which has led to variations of cultures that can “provide a source of identity for contemporary human beings”.
Jeff Corkill
Spokane, Washington, US
A Russian smokescreen
It strikes me as a weird pretext that the US closes the Russian embassy on – surely true – accounts of espionage (6 January). What emerged from Edward Snowden’s revelations was that the US embassies were used exactly for that. And other intelligent agencies will do so, too.
I also lack to see why “inviting ‘all the children of American diplomats’ to visit the Kremlin’s Christmas tree” is a “subtle reminder that the FSB [Russian intelligence] had information”. I reckon it is a fairly good guess that the staff have families and potentially children.
The entire topic of the alleged Russian meddling in the US votes is crooked. The content of the emails was never denied but barely discussed. Perhaps we should focus less on others and more on what our political elite tries to hide from us.
Steffen Müller
Hastings, UK
Our intellectual challenge
George Monbiot rightly lashes the “end of history” crowd: those shameless cheerleaders for globalised capitalism giddy with the fever of post-Soviet/post-Maoist triumphalism (30 December). It maybe doesn’t look so rosy now?
Monbiot is searching the horizon, as we all must, for alternate beliefs that will act to sheet in the sails of private property and corporate expansion, but the trade winds may prove to be too strong. Perhaps the retrieval of the idea of a commons will assist in this search and perhaps not. Subsistence economies rely on perceptions of a shared commons that is widely respected, but exploitative economies only seem to covet the commandment for “more”.
The greatest intellectual challenge facing our species is to imagine a system that transcends the disruptive norms of capitalism while shifting the basis for human respect and social status from the ownership of wealth to the communal actions of our fellow humans.
David Neice
Stratford, Ontario, Canada
Joy of handwritten letters
Jon McGregor’s piece on Reconnecting with handwritten letters (30 December) struck a chord with me. This Christmas I had reason to read the cards accumulated by my late wife over the years. I considered these to be a subset of McGregor’s letters and to be compared with the increasing number of e-cards received each year to the detriment of the charity card organisations. The messages on the cards were usually short, often highly emotional and, in the case of my wife, written in a near-hieroglyphical style that to many friends was known as “the gift that keeps on giving” as they fought to determine the wording. That gift is true of so many cards written and sent in the near and distant past, and not to be thrown away.
Graham Rawlings
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Jon McGregor’s article about the virtues of handwritten letters notes that many of his correspondents apologised for their poor handwriting. I will be eternally grateful to Muriel St Clare Byrne, editor of The Lisle Letters from the time of Henry VIII, who must have endured decades of work to decipher the script of those Tudor letter writers, many of whom used atrocious handwriting unapologetically.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Briefly
• The 30 December issue was one of the best. It is now in pieces: the feature on handwritten letters went to a faithful pen-on-paper friend; Andre Spicer on happier workers to my grandson, an engineer, who has an offer to work part-time at home; and Bringing up the bodies in the Balkans to my Montenegrin friend from whom I had borrowed The Yugoslav Drama by Mihailo Crnobrnja. And, as he takes over my nation’s powerful neighbour, Donald Trump – who gives new meaning to Teddy Roosevelt’s old phrase “ bully pulpit” – was nowhere to be seen. For all this and much else, thank you.
Elizabeth Quance
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• May I suggest one very small editorial amendment to the item India beating renewable energy target in your World roundup (30 December)? The addition of a question mark would have transformed it from a regurgitation of yet another politician’s promise into an apposite comment. Such promises are cheap to make but expensive to deliver. The costs are predictable with confidence but the benefit is not, so the likelihood of it happening is low.The energy minister is appealing for richer countries to fund the programme; when they do not stump up, he will also have a ready-made excuse for its failure. That’s how politics works.
David Barker
Bunbury, Western Australia
• Ian Martin’s celebration of being alive moved me to tears (16 December). He infused the dire headlines of the year’s news with the ineffable joy of personal survival. Thanks to him, readers don’t have to be given a terrifying prognostication to savour our good fortune to be alive. I am hanging on to his writing to buoy me up in moments of gloom. Thank you, Ian Martin.
Judith Umbach
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• The editorial cartoon in the 6 January Weekly was quite superb. I realise that it is an adaptation from Hieronymus Bosch’s work The Triumph of Death, but the artist has captured the current (very depressing) state of affairs in the world excellently, although of course it is deeply troubling. This one should be saved for posterity!
Michael L Barton
Fredrikstad, Norway
• I was fascinated by your article about recorder players (6 January). Many years ago, we were camping on Mount Buffalo in Victoria. At about 9pm we heard the most wonderful music coming through the trees. We followed the sound. There were two young men, one with a treble and the other with a tenor recorder playing a Vivaldi concerto. There was quite a big group listening silently. It was a magical experience.
Jane Costello
Woronora, NSW, Australia
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