Sunday April 25, 2010
When you play with fire, expect to get burned
By Jim Taylor
The 40th anniversary of Earth Day seems marked by an exceptional number of natural disasters. So far this year, six earthquakes have hit magnitude seven or greater. After Haiti, China, Japan, Indonesia, Spain, and Chile, the mass media barely bothered reporting an earthquake under the Mexico-California border that was actually bigger in magnitude, if not in death and damage, than Haiti’s.
Massive rainfalls triggered floods in Brazil, in Madeira, and in Australia.
Then the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland spread its pall of airborne ash from Newfoundland to the Baltic Sea, shutting down air traffic all across northern Europe.
The volcano’s visual effects – black clouds roiling, water boiling, earth splitting, lightning flashing, lava spouting – matched many apocalyptic descriptions of the end of the world.
For religious fundamentalists, it was too good an opportunity to miss.
Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi blamed the spate of earthquakes on "women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society.”
American Rush Limbaugh, who can be counted on to top anyone else’s inanity, called the Iceland eruption “God speaking” against Barrack Obama’s healthcare policy.
Seeking a supernatural source
It’s probably comforting for victims to blame a supernatural being for their misfortunes. Dazed Haitian survivors wondered what they had done to deserve their devastation. A dairy farmer in Iceland, watching his fields disappear under grey ash, asked, “What are we being punished for?”
Even Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attributed his country’s floods to divine causes: “When the Man upstairs is cross and makes it rain, all we can do is ask Him to stop….”
Comforting or not, such sentiments distract us from our own involvement in the nature and scale of these disasters. And I’m not talking about global warming, which may or may not have influenced extreme weather patterns.
Basically, if you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned sometimes.
Dangerous situations
Icelanders live in one of the world’s most active volcanic zones. The country benefits from abundant thermal energy. Past eruptions have enriched its soil. But there’s an inevitable price to pay. Volcanoes do not submit to human control.
A recent study lists Italy’s Mount Vesuvius as Europe’s most dangerous volcano. (Eyjafjallajokull did not even make the top ten.) A major eruption by Vesuvius could cause 8,000 fatalities and economic losses of more than $24 billion, according to the Willis Research Network. Not because it’s more powerful. But because so many millions of people live on and around its slopes.
That’s the paradox of human behaviour. We take risks, and then look for someone else to blame when those risks bite us.
The benefits of neglect
Take Rio de Janeiro, for example. The city has one of the world’s most beautiful settings. Its spectacular beaches, like Ipanema and Copacobana, are world famous. On the rock pinnacle of Corcovado, the towering figure of Christ stands with arms outstretched over the city.
Rio’s favelas – shanty towns, squatter villages – ring the city. Houses are built on clay slopes too steep for more prudent builders. The same pattern recurs outside Port of Spain in Trinidad, Kingston in Jamaica.
The land was free, because no one else wanted it.
In Niteroi, across the bay from Rio, the Morro do Bumba favela occupies a 40-year-old landfill. Bumba residents tapped methane created by decomposing garbage beneath their houses for use as cooking gas.
But describing favelas as shanty towns does them an injustice.
Initially, squatters use anything at all to construct housing — highway signs, wrecked vehicles, shipping crates, even cardboard cartons. In Curitiba, I saw homes dug out of mud bluffs, like a crude version of Cappadocia in Turkey.
But it doesn’t take long for makeshift housing to become permanent. Home owners strengthen walls and add rooms. Some favelas I saw 40 years ago already resembled prosperous subdivisions, with brightly painted walls and windows, flowers blooming in postage-stamp yards, schools and churches, local stores lining the streets…
Two-edged swords
But here’s the point. Those favelas existed precisely because they were unregulated. No governments imposed building codes. Or restricted deforestation of the hillsides. Or installed storm sewers and catch basins.
Then Rio got 28 centimetres, 11 inches, of rain in a single day – as much as normally falls in the entire month of April. Earlier, Sao Paulo had its greatest rainfall in 77 years.
Runoff gouged unpaved streets. Precipitous clay slopes softened into Jello. Mudslides buried entire neighbourhoods. In the Rio area alone, deaths surpassed 300 – but authorities really didn’t know how many were there in the first place.
Then victims and experts alike criticized governments for failing to protect favela inhabitants from unpredictable disasters.
It’s a two-edged sword. First the favela dwellers benefited from government neglect. Then they suffered because of government neglect.
In such circumstances, both governments and victims want to blame anyone but themselves.
I wonder sometimes — if we had no God or gods to blame for “acts of God,” would we accept more responsibility for our own involvement?
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn
So I went from a column about class differences and poverty, to a column about abortion and women’s right. Someday I’ll learn to recognize frying pans and fires!
Krista Markstrom expressed some strong feelings about “what often happens to women in relationships:
“A man sees a woman who is very attractive. He seeks out this woman by pursuing her. The woman is finally persuaded by the man to date him. The man tells this woman all the wonderful things she wants/loves/needs to hear. The man’s continued advances stimulate the woman’s naturally occurring procreative hormones. They become a couple. Sometimes the woman becomes pregnant. Sometimes after becoming pregnant, the man will decide he doesn’t want to stay with the woman any longer. Long-term commitment was not part of his long-range goal — only pursuing and getting the woman. The relationship starts to falter. The woman has two choices:
1) to keep the man who loves her so much, she has an abortion, or
2) keep the child and raise the child alone.
“The likelihood of choosing #1 will most likely not produce a positive outcome either.
“The way I see Nebraska’s new legislation mandate that a woman would need to have psychological counseling in seeking an abortion, because she’s now willing to create a criminal act, is good. Why? Through psychological counseling many women will begin to understand that another person should not validate who we as women are as human beings. We need to validate ourselves.
“An additional effect of psychological counseling is that many women, who are very smart in the first place, will begin to understand that many men have a syndromic tendency to be interested only in sex, not in being a full partner in a healthy relationship.
“My concern as a result is that rape statistics will increase. Men don’t like being told no. I know because I was raped once when I said ‘No’. Hopefully, Governor Heineman, or future Nebraskan governors, will be willing to fund counseling for women who have been raped.
I am glad I do not have daughters. I am glad I do not live in Nebraska. I am glad I am now considered an older woman because of no longer being able to conceive. My life experiences over many years have taught me to value life. My life experiences have also taught me that a healthy relationship makes for a healthy family, and that came as a result of years of counseling. I truly hope the next legislation Governor Heineman signs is for quality, affordable healthcare that will enable women to effectively manage and take care of themselves and their families when they are on their own.”
Ruth Zenger had comments about both of the last two columns. “I am a nurse who never needed an abortion, but I have nursed those whose illegal abortion went wrong. I would prefer that no one ever had an abortion, but I have no right to decide how stressful/impossible that pregnancy might be to an individual woman. Keep abortion safe, legal and rare.
“In the discussion about poverty, I believe we need to look at the differences in individual self-esteem and also the individual’s support system. Both those factors can make or break a person’s ability to survive hard times.”
A reader who prefers to remain anonymous wrote about poverty in his own family – two children struggling, while a third heads for his third degree in comfortable affluence.
“We love all our children dearly and can see some of the decisions that they have made that brought them to where they are now. We try to help with appropriate gifts but, you guessed it, sometimes the gifts help and sometimes they don’t.
“I have learned through my family and my work with poor families elsewhere that when you have your back to the wall, when you worry about feeding your children, then sorting the trash is not your first priority. When your level of education is low, you have a job seeing things as more educated people do.
“I am also aware that tax evasion and criminal gambling by bonused bankers costs us as a society much more than welfare handouts to the poor. Yes, I am confused about this too…”
Suzanne Edgar wrote, “Hats off to you for your honesty, but, honestly, you’re not asking the right questions! ‘Examining the implications of poverty without preconceived allegiances’ is well-nigh impossible. The thing to remember, no matter what the stats, is that these are real people in both kinds of neighbourhoods. People in the one kind have more skills and more invested in looking after their neighbourhoods and staying out of trouble. People in the other kind of neighbourhood have needs and challenges most of us can’t even imagine.”
Paul Philips described his own experiences as a person so committed to recycling that he helped to build Victoria’s first recycling boxes back in 1970. “Through extraordinary circumstances, I became a multiple property owner… Though from a working class socialist background, as an owner I’m in a different category from my tenants. I may wish to see myself as sharing the same ground but I don’t. I’m seen as I am — the owner/landlord.
“I feel that same schism in your column. I don’t wish to further demean people who can be seen as disenfranchised by their circumstances, but also don’t want to give them a bye. Demanding that they too take responsibility for THEIR planet.
“One property, grandmother, daughter with 2 children. Every second recycling week ,they put out a token tiny container This is in contrast to the two huge bags of garbage(containing recyclables) they throw away weekly.. I really do know, I load the bins each week. And because I can’t pretend _I_ don’t know better, I slash the bags, take out their bottles, their cans, recycle them. Pointless talking to them, they’re on a different planet, and I’m just a drag. What you’d expect from a landlord, right?
“Equally noticeably, if I pay for electricity used by tenants, it’s always at least 1.5/2 times higher than if they foot the bill.
“Far be it from me to add to the cost of living, but user-pay will be the only way to change the behaviour of people whose actions destroy this wonderfully unique planet.”
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About My Books
This is a special note to the several hundred readers who subscribed after Ralph Milton shut down his Rumors e-newsletter. Every week, Rumors printed a psalm paraphrase, written by me. Some of you used them regularly in worship, either as a substitute for or in parallel with the regular lectionary psalm reading.
Those psalms are still available, even though Rumors is not. They were published in book form by Wood Lake Books in 1994, and republished in 2005. The book is called Everyday Psalms. I have a few copies of my own, but you’re better to contact Wood Lake Books directly. The cover says $19.95 Cdn, $15.95 US, but Wood Lake often has sales.
Contact them at
[email protected]
www.woodlakebooks.com
1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-888-841-9991 (Pilgrim Press) in the US
by mail at 9590 Jim Bailey Road, Kelowna, BC, Canada, V4V 1R2
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