Saturday, September 10, 2005
COMRADES IN ADVERSITY
WILL THE TSUNAMI AND KATRINA START PULLING US TOGETHER?
Hurricane Katrina has blown open a Pandora’s box that had cracked only a little after the December 26, 2004 Tsunami. It’s also wafted in a little currency from the pockets of over twenty wealthy countries including a couple of sworn U.S. enemies – FOR AID TO THE UNITED STATES!
That’s so unthinkable it may take a while for Bush to register embarrassment (and when it does I would not like to be in his firing line).
It has often been speculated that the human race would come together as one if an outside force of sufficient magnitude and ubuiquity threatened the planet – space aliens and giant meteors are the favourite fictional culprits but now it seems that, collectively, WE are the culprits.
In our not-so-ignorant disregard for the fundamental environmental fact that nothing can live in an environment consisting of its own waste products, we have fallen victim to the Law of Unforseen Consequences:
Our gaseous emmissions have, inter alia, contributed to the holes in the ozone layer.
These tears in the fabric of our ecosystem are apparently connected to the ‘global warming’ phenomenon.
Which, also apparently, contribute to ‘unnatural’ weather phenomena.
Perhaps by banding together in our common humanity against the consequences of our common mistakes we may discover that we are, after all, part of nature.
It may have begun to happen: One only needs to look back at the world’s response to the December Tsunami - a response that should be held up forever as a precedent for the real Tsunami we are facing – the planet-wrecking winds and tides of global ignorance, poverty and disease (IPD) that merely tremble – like frightening dream-ghosts - on the edge of our collective conscience.
‘Have-nots’ have been with us since before we were buying and selling people. The weak, the uneducated, the ignorant, the peasant populations of most countries including those in New Orleans are the victims of this other hurricane Tsunami and they are now a growing global media presence – through the media, they are in our faces every day, a litany of tragedies that litter every aspect of our middle-class lives but no one wants to start a Tsunami-style fund-raising race where the fashionable outbid each other on fighting the war on that ever-present IPD global hurricane.
Nor, it seems on the war against AIDS in South Africa.
Why?
I think that the AIDS and IPD pandemics are too slow to be as dramatic as a savage six-hour hurricane even though the finality of their effects are individually as savage: dramatic, small tragedies. But we lack imagination. There are perhaps not enough pictures of dead poor people and AIDS victims piled or scattered about in one place?
At the beginning of the twenty-third century in America’s capital city, Washington, D.C., it cost 25% more to keep a person in jail than to provide food, clothing, shelter, transportation and counseling services on the outside.
I fear this may indicate that until now we are, collectively, far more prone to wrath and retribution than care and compassion.
Tom Dennen
92 Esselmont Avenue
Greyville
Durban 4001
072 125 8787
WILL THE TSUNAMI AND KATRINA START PULLING US TOGETHER?
Hurricane Katrina has blown open a Pandora’s box that had cracked only a little after the December 26, 2004 Tsunami. It’s also wafted in a little currency from the pockets of over twenty wealthy countries including a couple of sworn U.S. enemies – FOR AID TO THE UNITED STATES!
That’s so unthinkable it may take a while for Bush to register embarrassment (and when it does I would not like to be in his firing line).
It has often been speculated that the human race would come together as one if an outside force of sufficient magnitude and ubuiquity threatened the planet – space aliens and giant meteors are the favourite fictional culprits but now it seems that, collectively, WE are the culprits.
In our not-so-ignorant disregard for the fundamental environmental fact that nothing can live in an environment consisting of its own waste products, we have fallen victim to the Law of Unforseen Consequences:
Our gaseous emmissions have, inter alia, contributed to the holes in the ozone layer.
These tears in the fabric of our ecosystem are apparently connected to the ‘global warming’ phenomenon.
Which, also apparently, contribute to ‘unnatural’ weather phenomena.
Perhaps by banding together in our common humanity against the consequences of our common mistakes we may discover that we are, after all, part of nature.
It may have begun to happen: One only needs to look back at the world’s response to the December Tsunami - a response that should be held up forever as a precedent for the real Tsunami we are facing – the planet-wrecking winds and tides of global ignorance, poverty and disease (IPD) that merely tremble – like frightening dream-ghosts - on the edge of our collective conscience.
‘Have-nots’ have been with us since before we were buying and selling people. The weak, the uneducated, the ignorant, the peasant populations of most countries including those in New Orleans are the victims of this other hurricane Tsunami and they are now a growing global media presence – through the media, they are in our faces every day, a litany of tragedies that litter every aspect of our middle-class lives but no one wants to start a Tsunami-style fund-raising race where the fashionable outbid each other on fighting the war on that ever-present IPD global hurricane.
Nor, it seems on the war against AIDS in South Africa.
Why?
I think that the AIDS and IPD pandemics are too slow to be as dramatic as a savage six-hour hurricane even though the finality of their effects are individually as savage: dramatic, small tragedies. But we lack imagination. There are perhaps not enough pictures of dead poor people and AIDS victims piled or scattered about in one place?
At the beginning of the twenty-third century in America’s capital city, Washington, D.C., it cost 25% more to keep a person in jail than to provide food, clothing, shelter, transportation and counseling services on the outside.
I fear this may indicate that until now we are, collectively, far more prone to wrath and retribution than care and compassion.
Tom Dennen
92 Esselmont Avenue
Greyville
Durban 4001
072 125 8787
WILL THE TSUNAMI AND KATRINA START PULLING US TOGETHER?
COMRADES IN ADVERSITY
Hurricane Katrina has blown open a Pandora’s box that had cracked only a little after the December 26, 2004 Tsunami. It’s also wafted in a little currency from the pockets of over twenty wealthy countries including a couple of sworn U.S. enemies – FOR AID TO THE UNITED STATES!
That’s so unthinkable it may take a while for Bush to register embarrassment (and when it does I would not like to be in his firing line).
It has often been speculated that the human race would come together as one if an outside force of sufficient magnitude and ubuiquity threatened the planet – space aliens and giant meteors are the favourite fictional culprits but now it seems that, collectively, WE are the culprits.
In our not-so-ignorant disregard for the fundamental environmental fact that nothing can live in an environment consisting of its own waste products, we have fallen victim to the Law of Unforseen Consequences:
Our gaseous emmissions have, inter alia, contributed to the holes in the ozone layer.
These tears in the fabric of our ecosystem are apparently connected to the ‘global warming’ phenomenon.
Which, also apparently, contribute to ‘unnatural’ weather phenomena.
Perhaps by banding together in our common humanity against the consequences of our common mistakes we may discover that we are, after all, part of nature.
It may have begun to happen: One only needs to look back at the world’s response to the December Tsunami - a response that should be held up forever as a precedent for the real Tsunami we are facing – the planet-wrecking winds and tides of global ignorance, poverty and disease (IPD) that merely tremble – like frightening dream-ghosts - on the edge of our collective conscience.
‘Have-nots’ have been with us since before we were buying and selling people. The weak, the uneducated, the ignorant, the peasant populations of most countries including those in New Orleans are the victims of this other hurricane Tsunami and they are now a growing global media presence – through the media, they are in our faces every day, a litany of tragedies that litter every aspect of our middle-class lives but no one wants to start a Tsunami-style fund-raising race where the fashionable outbid each other on fighting the war on that ever-present IPD global hurricane.
Nor, it seems on the war against AIDS in South Africa.
Why?
I think that the AIDS and IPD pandemics are too slow to be as dramatic as a savage six-hour hurricane even though the finality of their effects are individually as savage: dramatic, small tragedies. But we lack imagination. There are perhaps not enough pictures of dead poor people and AIDS victims piled or scattered about in one place?
At the beginning of the twenty-third century in America’s capital city, Washington, D.C., it cost 25% more to keep a person in jail than to provide food, clothing, shelter, transportation and counseling services on the outside.
I fear this may indicate that until now we are, collectively, far more prone to wrath and retribution than care and compassion.
Tom Dennen
92 Esselmont Avenue
Greyville
Durban 4001
+27 073 125 8787
Hurricane Katrina has blown open a Pandora’s box that had cracked only a little after the December 26, 2004 Tsunami. It’s also wafted in a little currency from the pockets of over twenty wealthy countries including a couple of sworn U.S. enemies – FOR AID TO THE UNITED STATES!
That’s so unthinkable it may take a while for Bush to register embarrassment (and when it does I would not like to be in his firing line).
It has often been speculated that the human race would come together as one if an outside force of sufficient magnitude and ubuiquity threatened the planet – space aliens and giant meteors are the favourite fictional culprits but now it seems that, collectively, WE are the culprits.
In our not-so-ignorant disregard for the fundamental environmental fact that nothing can live in an environment consisting of its own waste products, we have fallen victim to the Law of Unforseen Consequences:
Our gaseous emmissions have, inter alia, contributed to the holes in the ozone layer.
These tears in the fabric of our ecosystem are apparently connected to the ‘global warming’ phenomenon.
Which, also apparently, contribute to ‘unnatural’ weather phenomena.
Perhaps by banding together in our common humanity against the consequences of our common mistakes we may discover that we are, after all, part of nature.
It may have begun to happen: One only needs to look back at the world’s response to the December Tsunami - a response that should be held up forever as a precedent for the real Tsunami we are facing – the planet-wrecking winds and tides of global ignorance, poverty and disease (IPD) that merely tremble – like frightening dream-ghosts - on the edge of our collective conscience.
‘Have-nots’ have been with us since before we were buying and selling people. The weak, the uneducated, the ignorant, the peasant populations of most countries including those in New Orleans are the victims of this other hurricane Tsunami and they are now a growing global media presence – through the media, they are in our faces every day, a litany of tragedies that litter every aspect of our middle-class lives but no one wants to start a Tsunami-style fund-raising race where the fashionable outbid each other on fighting the war on that ever-present IPD global hurricane.
Nor, it seems on the war against AIDS in South Africa.
Why?
I think that the AIDS and IPD pandemics are too slow to be as dramatic as a savage six-hour hurricane even though the finality of their effects are individually as savage: dramatic, small tragedies. But we lack imagination. There are perhaps not enough pictures of dead poor people and AIDS victims piled or scattered about in one place?
At the beginning of the twenty-third century in America’s capital city, Washington, D.C., it cost 25% more to keep a person in jail than to provide food, clothing, shelter, transportation and counseling services on the outside.
I fear this may indicate that until now we are, collectively, far more prone to wrath and retribution than care and compassion.
Tom Dennen
92 Esselmont Avenue
Greyville
Durban 4001
+27 073 125 8787
