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The past few days have brought two pieces of sad news: the deaths of eight soldiers in Afghanistan, and that of a fireman in a pub fire in Edinburgh.
The shocked reactions to both demonstrate how unprepared we are for death, and how hard it therefore is for us to go to war.
Before we had modern medicine, health and safety legislation, and most of a century of peace, death was a normal part of life.
A hundred years ago, one child in six died before the age of five; war wiped out generations of young men; dangerous jobs - in mining and fishing, for instance - picked off those who stayed at home.
But now the death of a baby is a rare disaster, most jobs are so safe that nobody dies at work (except of boredom) and life expectancy is edging beyond 80. Death usually comes quietly, to people worn down by age, not violently to people in their prime.
But there are still dangerous jobs. Fighting fires is one of them, fighting enemies another. Flames and bullets can still kill those who battle them, however much protective equipment is deployed.
The brave people who sign up for those jobs know that, and face those dangers willingly, but society seems less and less prepared to put up with such horrors.
Hence the wobbliness, as the number of casualties rises, about Britain's presence in Afghanistan - a feeling that Barack Obama seemed to be addressing when he said on Sunday that his "heart obviously goes out to the families of those British soldiers".
There are plenty of good arguments for pulling out of Afghanistan. Some people think we should not have gone in in the first place, because, as our Victorian ancestors could have told us, fighting the Pathans in their mountain strongholds is a thankless task.
Some people think that now Osama bin Laden has left we have no idea what we're trying to do there, so we might as well get out. Some people think the Afghan government is too vile to women for us to lend it our support.
I disagree with those arguments but any one of them would provide reasonable grounds for packing up and going home. The casualty rate, however, does not. By the standards of most wars, Afghanistan has taken few lives.
Over seven years, 184 people have died. That compares with 255 killed in the Falklands in 10 weeks, and 4,241 Americans killed in Iraq in six-and-a-half years.
The rate of casualties in Afghanistan should not discourage Britain from pursuing a war it believes to be right or from supporting an alliance to which it is committed.
The sight of a coffin with a flag draped over it is one of the saddest in the world. If we cannot bear to see any more, it is understandable.
But that decision will have consequences. It will mean we are no longer prepared to go to war, that our allies cannot rely on us to fight beside them and that our influence in the world will therefore decline even more swiftly in the future than it has done in the past.
Emma Duncan is deputy editor of the Economist.
Gripped by Carlos fever
I have searched in vain for tickets to see the star of the Royal Ballet, Carlos Acosta, at the Coliseum later this month.
I'm told tickets for his performances sell out the moment they become available. How can we account for the interest in this man?
Perhaps it's something to do with his technique; or maybe there's something in modern ballet that speaks to the 21st-century zeitgeist. Art is a mysterious business.
• City investment bank Morgan Stanley has published the thoughts of a 15-year-old intern on his generation's media consumption habits.
The research note, which made the front page of the Financial Times, included such startling revelations as the reluctance of teenagers to pay for music and the frequency of their visits to Facebook and MySpace.
It was, said Edward Hill-Wood, executive director of Morgan Stanley's European media team, "one of the clearest, most thought-provoking insights we have seen, so we published it". Which says a lot about the stuff produced by the grown-ups at Morgan Stanley.
The jury's out on our civic duties'
Respect isn't just something for gangs to fight over: it's at the heart of social institutions. A friend of mine has been on jury service for the past couple of weeks. He bounced in on the first day eager to fulfil his civic duty.
For two weeks he was kept in a sort of cattle pen at the Old Bailey with other potential jurors. He sat there all day, day after day, while announcements blared out across the Tannoy.
After two weeks of wasted time — which, as a businessman with his own company, he can ill afford — he was dismissed.
Politicians worry about declining levels of civic involvement. My friend's experience offers a clue as to why that might be happening.
If those who try to be good citizens are treated without respect, they will take a similar view of the idea of citizenship.
Reader views (1)
The article on the war in Afghanistan is fine except for its complete lack of an argument as to why we should be there. Who believes it is right? What are we fighting to deliver? [The argument about how women are treated there is by the way almost completely ignored by our female commentators]. Where is the British self-interest? And, much more pertinent, why do so few other Western / Liberal economies believe in it that they aren't prepared to have their servicement die?
- Peter Bench, London, 14/07/2009 13:25
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