Tsunami, tornados and now devastating earthquake.
It is almost as if Mother Earth is letting us know that she is not happy with the way that we have been treating her.
Nah.
If a big quake happened in Kashmir 100 years ago, very few people would have heard about it.
It’s CNN.
Mukade
I stand in awe of Mother Nature.
But I think what you say is true. We are so much more aware of what’s going on all over the world these days.
Still, such an enormous loss of life with that earthquake. Those poor people
M
while any loss of life is horrible…
I have to agree with Mukade. Plus - just the human race living in a lot of areas, in heavy concentrations, that “we” weren’t not too long ago. If Katrina had hit 300 years ago, some Native Americans and a few trappers would have been the only ones there to be effected. Instead, we had several major cities hit. Same with the tsunami last year, even 100 years ago, there would have been native villages wiped out - but the tourist trade is a recent development in that area. I’m not familiar with the history of where this recent earthquake hit, so not sure if this holds true there.
But any of these disasters happening 200 years ago - we MAY have heard of them in a month’s time period - maybe not. 300 years ago - probably wouldn’t have heard a thing.
It is quite true that modern communications mean that we get to hear about pretty much every natural disaster these days. Increases in population also mean that some places which would have been uninhabited in centuries past now have residents - therefore, where storms and earthquakes would have had no victims in the past, there are now vulnerable populations.
Even if there has been a higher than average incidence of extreme natural events, it would be much too early to identify anything more than a blip.
I am not sure whether I believe in The Spirit of Nature or Earth Mother, or not. The rational, scientific part of me believes that the earth events, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, etc., are to be expected, since such earth events have been happening on this planet for a long, long time. Large earthquakes occur in seismically active regions of the earth because of plate techtonics. Of course, the loss of innocent life due to these major earth events is regrettable. Out prayers go out to all who are suffering because of this.
I am not qualified to answer the question as to whether Earth Mother may be greatly upset with the destruction of the planet and may be lashing out as a form of retribution with regard to the major earth events that we have witnessed recently. I suspect that this is merely an anthropomorphic way of trying to understand complex interrelationships on the planet. There is no doubt that species extinction, deforestation, escalating growth of human populations, etc. are causing great strain on the ecosystem of the planet, but I doubt that this has anything to do with seismic activity which is caused by the movement of major earth plates deep within the crust of the earth.
It seems to me that our task, as humans, is to use our collective knowledge to plan and build communities wisely. For example, it isn’t a good idea to build large population centers on the ocean coasts that are seasonally subjected to hurricanes.
If, for the last few hundred years, you had been repeatedly raped, beaten, plundered, and poisoned, and hundreds or thousands of your children were killed off virtually overnight, would you be angry?
Frankly, where ever one may choose to live, there is the threat of a disaster of one sort or another…hurricane,tornado, earthquake, flood, wild fires, tsunami, straight line winds, drive-by shootings, sink holes, avalanche, landslide… ad finitum.
The best we can do is to chose a place where the risks of these afore mention disasters are less frequent, and try to avoid the really, really stupid ones (like costal areas)… but that really isn’t a solution as I highly doubt folks would follow wisdom.
Yes, but I wouldn’t respond by killing off thousands of my children overnight…
A lot of the folks around me are saying the same thing, that the Earth or God or the Spirit of Creation is becoming angry at modern society…
I’m not offering my opinion on said matter or what I believe to be the case…but disasters like these have been happening for thousands of years; the ones that we’re in the middle of appear to be about par for life on Earth. We should be grateful that we live in a comparatively stable environment and don’t have to experience greater cataclisms that this universe has to offer.
The greatest thing that I have learned from observing catastrophies, recent and historic, is the indominable will to overcome and survive that human beings display in general. As a species we are survivors. That gives me hope, hope that we will continue to overcome, hope that we can continue to aspire to be better, and hope that the sun will continue to rise on a new day.
Its interesting to read history - how other people in other times have responded to the same natural disasters in the same way, i.e. to use the event as a platform to promote their own feelings of guilt about whatever, and to accuse the “evil ways” of their socities (or someone else’s society) as the root cause. If the development of public education and the sciences has done anything for us, it is to reveal the the simplistic fear that underlies these superstitions that we may recognize them for what they are, and not allow ourselves to be controlled or confined by them.
These natural catastrophies have been occurring to the planet since before there was any life on it, and will continue to happen until our sun and planet are no more. The more we look at the history of earth, and the more we search the near universe for other possible places where life could take hold, it becomes abundantly clear how often life can be wiped out on a planet, and how rare it is, indeed, that we have survived this long. What we may think or believe has no effect on the workings of the cosmos.
djm
The simple fact is that Mother Nature is a real mother…
I think it’s the simple fact that we do not yet (and may perhaps never) command the sheer force that represents even the mean of the forces that nature commands.
We look at the massive storms and it seems impossible to us that these (and worse) have come hundreds of thousands of times before…but they have.
And I do think the media thrives on modern disasters, playing them for all they are worth and even trying to create “entertainment” out of them, a practice I find of questionable taste but predictable profit.
These are statements of what I believe to be fact.
None of that, though, makes it any less true that we have been abusive of the earth for a long time, and that the force that is the Earth may be gathering herself for a response. This is a statement of my own spirituality. I do not claim it to be “true” as facts are “true,” but I do think it is a viewpoint which represents a reflection of one level of reality.
–James
I think of nature as an unfathomably complex set of processes, of which we are a part, governed by physical laws .
We, because of our large numbers, might do things that affect a process and cause results that are bad for ourselves or others—I guess cars and other things causing smog would be an example. But the fact that smog makes people ill is not a punishment from nature for causing smog. It is the effect that particular chemicals and particles have on the lungs. If we are lucky we can figure out what altered a previously beneficial process and try to correct the problem.
I have seen nothing convincing that indicates we are doing things that cause earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, etc. These processes are those that have always changed the surface of the earth. Is there any reason to think that the surface of the earth reached completion at some point?
I can’t imagine thinking that nature has some intention toward us, either good or bad. To me this is like Ahab taking the attack of Moby Dick personally. Moby Dick was just being a whale. Moby Dick didn’t know Ahab from anything.
My favourite description of the earth is to consider it as a ball with stress lines running between the poles, similar to the lines of longitude. The earth swells and contracts between the poles, and anything along the stress lines gets the $**t kicked out of it.
djm
There’s a great book called A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright, a BC based author and archeologist. He argues that the history of civilisation keeps repeating itself: a society begins, then flurishes, then collapses. It usually flurishes because of agriculture providing enough food to support a population boom. It usually collapses because the society ends up destroying the immediate environment. Examples given are Sumar (southern Iraq), the Roman Empire, the Maya Empire and Easter Island.
The one thing that changes each time is that the society gets bigger and the collapse is more devastating (famine, disease, etc). Now that we’re a global society, Wright argues, the next collapse will have global consequences.
The only thing that makes our current society different is that we know about the previous failures in Sumar, Rome, etc., and can avoid making the same mistakes.
One of the shocking revelations in the book, for me, at any rate, is the extent of our dependance on oil. Not just for transport or for plastics, but for FERTILIZERS. A large percentage of fertilizers used in producing crops we eat directly or which are consumed by livestock which we consume, come from oil.
I’ve read a few David Suzuki books and found them interesting. Wright, who gives kind of the same message but who approaches the argument from an archeological point of view, I found impossible to put down. Iread the book (about 200 pages) in about 2 days.
But is there such a thing as the Spirit of the Earth? If we allow that a human being has a spiritual nature, it isn’t much of leap to grasp that the Earth itself must have a spiritual nature, even though Science at this point in history is not able to talk about it.
If any of you want me to, I’ll be happy to whip up a short lesson on plate tectonics and why earthquakes happen.
It has nothing to do with spirits, though, I assure you.
Sorry, but at what point did we succomb to the superstition about spirits, human, earthly or cosmic? We can dream ourselves to be as divine as we want, and can even anthropomorphize these notions onto the planet, but the planet keeps grinding on, with or without us.
djm
Well, I hope we can, but I have to confess I don’t feel particularly optimistic that we will. I don’t see how we will be able to reduce our dependence on oil. I understand ways it could be done, but it’s hard to imagine that the steps would actually be taken. I might read the books you mentioned. One you might find interesting is Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. It talks more about why societies have developed the way they have—somewhat similar to what you are talking about maybe.
Well, Doug, a person is a living thing. I can understand why some people might feel a person has a spirit, even if I don’t. The Earth is inanimate. So there is quite a difference there. I think this belief would be called animism—the belief that everything has a soul. I guess it is one way of looking at things. I myself cannot see a reason to look at things that way, but…