BVN February 2022

Fragile
I
saw a sign on the side of a building the other day. It was one of those
yellow triangles we are meant to pay attention to. It said, “Fragile Roof”.
At first glance, this appeared to be merely a warning to the curious. As I
walked past, I wondered what the sign expected me to do. How was I meant
to react to this gratuitous piece of information? Was it suggesting I steer
clear of the roof in case it should suddenly take off and crash land round my
feet? Should I see what I could do to help the building become more stable?
Should I feel concerned for the roof? I put this to the back of my mind,
until...I read an article about how in 2021 we all came to realise just how
fragile we are.
Our ancestors knew they were fragile. Our parents and grandparents
endured two world wars in which the actions of one man pushed the whole
world into turmoil and a period of fighting and fretting, anxiety and making
do and mending, until peace was re-established. A brief period of relative
prosperity and dazzling technological achievements produced a belief that
fragility was on the retreat and that making our global environment lastingly
secure was within easy reach.
But 2021 changed all of that. The withdrawal of foreign armies from
Afghanistan has only led to suppression and a famine of terrifying
proportions. As a result of climate change, there have been floods and
wildfires in parts of the globe that can least cope, and the personal loss and
fear caused by the worldwide pandemic has cast a long shadow. Our fragility
knows no national boundaries, and we can no longer ring fence such things
and say they are somebody else’s problem. Our children know this. We all
share the problem and the solution. In the future we are going to have to
learn how to live with this fragility and to harness for the common good the
technologies which made us feel secure, but now make us realise that the
truth is something radically different.
Our ancestors knew that in order simply to live, they needed to find and use
the imaginative resources within them. Science helped, but so did art and
religion. The arts were not merely a kind of window dressing, a spare time
activity to occupy the hands and the brain, but a way of expanding the mind
to take in other possibilities. Similarly, religion was not some kind of outdated
explanation of humanity superseded by science. Science shows why things
happened the way they do. Science can point us to solutions, but it cannot
save us from being fragile. Only the human spirit can motivate us to do
12