As I write this post
on Monday evening, the sun is out. It is a picturesque 69 F. The
oak trees are slightly swaying in the breeze which is gently blowing
in. The ground is a little damp, but there really is no standing
water.
3 hours away, up to
6 million people have been displaced in cascading torrents of wind
and water.
It is hard for me to
reconcile the two realities. Here, I am a little warm inside – but
I can always turn up the air conditioning, My water may run a little
warm – but I can always cool it down with ice from the
refrigerator. In Houston, there is (for a great many people) no air
conditioning and all the water in the world – but none that you can
drink.
This is the reality
of the media culture we live in. To a great many people, watching on
the TV or computer screens, this seems like little more than another
movie or video game. Yes, we can become teary eyed when a pet is
rescued or at a feel-good heroic picture – but I suspect for
most it is an unreal as the electrical impulses of HALO or Call of
Duty or Star Wars: we perceive it as real, but feel as if (in our souls) it is not.
It becomes
surreality, something which seems to be impossible – like flying
suits of armor or light weapons – but it is only surreal because we
choose to make it so. We have a choice to believe, to care, to take
action – to realize that they things that we so often fight over
are irrelevant in the grander scope of things, that like millions of
those that have gone before us, our plans and motives and small
grasps for small power – the things that we believe to be the
critical defining agendas of our lives – are just as surreal in the
scope of history as the thousands of books and movies that, once
written or made, disappeared in the dust bin of history.
The true reality is
visible to us. The question is, will we continue to turn away?
I guess I'm one of those people who turns away. I don't know why, it's not like I am an evil person who wishes suffering on others...I just feel like...I went through that for 3 weeks in January of 1998 and I survived, emotionally wrecked, but I learned from it. Not that I don't care if others go through it, but I've had enough of suffering. Being prepared is so important in our world and so many people don't do it and it baffles me. After at least Katrina, you would think that people would prepare for disasters, especially those who are in areas where there are hurricanes, tornadoes and other possibly devastating weather. I think that often if it doesn't happen to us, we don't take it too seriously. I don't know, maybe my life experience has just jaded me from caring about what others are doing and how they live and survive. I'm more concerned about the present, my own family and my home and my survival. I'm sure I'll be called selfish for that, and I'm sure it's true. That's my honest reply to your post TB! I'm sure lots of folks wouldn't admit it, but they feel the same way.
ReplyDeleteIt is an honest answer Rain, and you will never find fault with honesty at this blog (Really, we need more of it, not less, even if it hurts). And it is the people that are going through the disaster at the moment that it was directed at (yes, in all fairness everyone should be prepared, but to read some of these stories even the most prepared left most of the preparations behind in a very quickly rising flood). And agreed, people that live anywhere that natural disasters occur should have some level of preparation for that kind of disaster (an ice storm, I imagine, is quite different from a flood).
ReplyDeleteWhat frustrates me - the genesis of the second half of the article - are the groups (at least here in Southern Canada) that agitate for a particular group or belief and yet, when an actual disaster happens to an actual people group they are supposed to be representing, they are nowhere to be found. They can protest or riot or attack or destroy with the best of them but when they could actually make a difference, they mysteriously melt into the shadows. These are the people that make me angry, that have my disgust. They claim to speak for people and represent beliefs and opinions that are only a highway to their own power, not to actual caring.
And in reality - 100 years from now, 1000 years from now - these movements will, for the most part, not have mattered. We are always building castles not realizing that we are ultimately building in sand and the important things - at least in Christian World View, souls - are trashed and ignored and abandoned.
(Stepping away from soap box....)
I have somewhat the same take on this as Rain. Texas and Louisiana are catchers' mitts for storms coming off the gulf. Hurricanes happen there. Tornadoes happen there. They can happen any time of year, and anywhere in that area. WHY don't these people prepare? WHY don't they have a plan? Granted; many of these people got caught flat-footed, because their areas "never flood," but still; how much does it cost, over time, to keep some extra stuff around, "just in case?" Indeed, too many just sit back and say "The government will take care of it."
ReplyDeleteI'm with you; were are "black lives matter," "Antifa," "La Raza," and the like right now?... These people aren't building castles, TB; they're building prisons, the only difference between the two being which side of the door the lock is on... They're "useful idiots;" nothing more.
A plan. Maybe that is the thing that is missing in my concept of this. Your supplies can flood, but a plan never does.
ReplyDeleteAs to the government - there is a bit of an ongoing debate here about the fact that the governor called for an evacuation but the mayor and county judge did not. The mayor pointed to the fact that the hurricane was not supposed to hit there and how were they going to evacuate 6 million people anyway? Which speaks, of course, to a different issue.
Pete, I think going forward a completely legitimate question to ask each and every group is "When Harvey hit, where were you?"