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Thoughts in Dark Times of a World Made New

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

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Extract

Greetings from faraway Australia. We used to think that we were separated from the world’s problems—at once victims and beneficiaries of the tyranny of distance. As recent events have shown, we are all liked together—all are vulnerable. Vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. To global warming. To nuclear catastrophe. To terrorism.

In another September, also in dangerous times, the poet WH. Auden wrote in New York a message for our times. His words have been remembered in recent days. This is what he wrote:

On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , Winter 2002 , pp. 492 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2002

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References

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