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How very human to have thought such a thing. How
very human to think that we can, through the application of our energies and our
intellect, not just create our world, but also destroy it. To believe that the
power is within us, in our hands. How like a god is man in apprehension, wrote
Shakespeare, and maybe even he believed it.
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And as a species, we
have
proven capable of remarkable efforts, both in the creation of the artifacts of
our civilization, and in the destruction of those our fellow inhabitants,
through wars, or famines born of stupidity or criminal mismanagement. But then
Gaia finds a way to reduce us all to scale and speechlessness again. On Boxing
Day last year, she twitched a muscle in her sleep and a quarter
million windows on the universe were abruptly closed forever. New Orleans was
more lucky. But still we see the familiar images of the unthinkable: People
wading through the waist high waters where the street should be, where it had
always been. The light switch that doesn't do anything when thrown, the filthy
water from the tap. I've never been more disoriented than I was driving with my
family back to Key West after Hurricane Andrew ripped its way across southern
Florida. The roads had been cleared in Miami and Homestead, but that was about
it. All signs were gone, streetlights and buildings flung to dust and tangles.
Nothing was familiar, and everything was real. Men in BDUs with rifles on the
intersections, and I couldn't find my way to the US 1, the long, lonely road
that would bring us all home. Finally got back there to listen to the whine of
the gas-turbine powered generators which the city had laid in against just such
an emergency. Listened to the dialogue about whether "we," as prudent as we'd
been, should share our power with those further up the keys who hadn't laid in
such stores, or taken such precautions. It's a strange feeling to go to the Winn
Dixie and find out that the bottled water is all sold out. It takes you back a
peg or two from the place you customarily occupy, the warm and cozy place from
where you feel empowered to rail against the injustice of the world, and your
political opponents. When your back is truly up against it, the "other" gets
defined in increasingly broad terms.
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How flimsy are the constructs of civilization, faced
with the merciless and inhuman power of natural disaster, and how helpless are
we to do anything to stop an earthquake or hurricane. There is no reasoning with
an earthquake, no bargaining with a hurricane, you cannot shame them. And it's
not not just the constructs of civilization which are so frail and tender, the
infrastructure we accustom ourselves to, but also the human veneer: Proud and
capable people are left to gesture fruitlessly from rooftops to helicopter
crews, pointing out burning houses across flooded thoroughfares that no fireman
can traverse. Looters roam the waterlogged streets of one of America's most
diverse and fascinating cities, now become in a day's time only the latest
example of a uninhabitable wasteland. People wonder how they are going to get
food. Where they are going to find water. And in the way of hurricanes in
particular, it always seems that those who have the least are hardest hit.
Tornados spun from hurricanes seem to have a special affinity for trailer
parks.
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No doubt the Indonesian navy will be pulling up in
just a few days to help restore services, and provide medical care.
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Oh, that's not even a cheap shot, just a weak jape.
We'll be fine of course, we'll struggle through, and rebuild although it's bound
to be hot and nasty work. Other nations will only make pro forma offers of
assistance and really, who can blame them. But let's just put the difference
here between what we expect of the world, and what the world has come to expect
of us in our hip pockets for the next time that some greasy-haired community
college kid with a safety pin through his eyebrow tries to tell us how Amerikkka
is the root of all the world's evil.
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It's hard to find anything good about natural
disasters, but speaking only in relative terms, I think they are at least
slightly more congenial than the man-made kind. Even if I do struggle to
simultaneously maintain that they are, on the whole, more devastating. An
earthquake is a comprehensively democratic event, as random as the lottery and
none of your getting will get you free when the jaws of the world open up to
dine upon your tenderness, while a hurricane at least gives you time to move out
of its path. And then there is the issue of blame: Oh, I suppose someone
somewhere will be excoriated for the lamentable state of Lake Ponchartrain
levees, but everyone will know at the bottom of their hearts that nothing can
ever be made entirely secure from the depredations of mother nature. On the
other hand however, it's very unlikely that a Michael Moore will bestir his
elephantine corpulence to bewail that it was so unfair the hurricane struck New
Orleans: Didn't it realize that New Orleans didn't vote for Bush?
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One more thing, I guess to add to all the rest. It
is the weight of our burdens, and the way in which we carry them that give us
character. Throw the shovel over the shoulder and get back to work, brother.
Save who you can, mourn who you must, build it back up again.
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If it keeps on raining,
levee's going to break
If it keeps on raining, levee's going to
break
When the levee breaks I'll have no place to stay
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Mean old levee taught me
to weep and moan
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan
It's got
what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home
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Don't it make you feel
bad when you're trying to find your way home
You don't know which way to
go
If you're going down south, they got no work to do
If you're
going on to Chicago
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Crying won't help you -
praying won't do you no good
No, crying won't help you - praying won't do
you no good
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move
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All last night I sat on
the levee and moaned
All last night sat on the levee and
moaned
Thinking 'bout my baby and my happy home
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Going - I'm going to
Chicago
Going to Chicago
Sorry but I can't take you
Going down
- I'm going down now
Going down - I'm going down now
I'm going down
--
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-- "When the Levee
Breaks" Led Zeppelin
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