December 31, 2005
Hurricane as Metaphor
This past year, the remarkable and memorable year of 2005, we have passed through a hurricane season unprecedented in the annuls of weather tracking. Hurricanes have swept the southern coasts of the United States leaving devastation in their wake. Interestingly, we also are marking the first anniversary of the tsunami (not unlike a hurricane magnified a hundred fold), which left the coasts of southern Asia in ruin. Nature in her furry has awed and subdued us. Looking back, one cannot help but reflect on these events as a metaphor of humanity itself—certainly in our interrelationship with the natural order, but also perhaps as a mirror of the human condition. Are we seeing our own face reflected in the world around us?
If we are, then there is clear evidence of the spirit of violence we take out on one another and the environment, which holds us so carefully. Much of the devastation along the US coasts and in Asia would have been far less disastrous if we had attended to the environment in the way we should have. It is clear now that we ourselves intensified the results of the disasters by our neglect of mangrove forests, wetlands, and coastal barriers—in the hot pursuit of real estate development (which euphemistically we always call “progress”). So many of our commercial projects, defined as economic necessities, in the end turned out to infliction more hurt and harm not only to the natural world, but to the human world than anything nature alone can do. We learn so slowly.
Interestingly the hurricanes and tsunamis have taken one of our highest of human priorities—comfort and luxury, possessions and property, energy and wealth along the coasts at any cost—and unmasked them as misdirected and dangerous values, ones that in the end will kill and destroy us more surely than the storms. The hurricanes left a trail of chaos in their wake, again a metaphor for all the violence we perpetuated upon ourselves—whole landscapes around the world littered with our wreckage. So now we can see the results so magnified we cannot miss the point—or can we?
In a more positive light, the devastation brought out the best in many people. Thousands responded with care and compassion to offer help and aid to those who were in need. Stories of bravery and self-giving were moments of light in a sea of darkness and despair. The efforts continue. Creative energies to revision and rebuild have been unleashed. Some communities will come back better than before. Others, unfortunately, will fade out of time and memory.
Perhaps most egregious was the governmental and bureaucratic ineptitude revealed by these disasters. In so many cases governments and agencies did not respond, or when they did, they made their highest priority self-protection. Finally we saw all too well that “the Emperor has no clothes.” Something we had expected for some time became obvious to many who had ignored the obvious for too long.
Could the hurricanes and the tsunamis prove to be serendipitous events? Could they even be a synchronicity aimed by a greater Intelligence (Gaia perhaps) at awakening the creatures who inhabit her body? At the close of this year, and the beginning of the next, we will need these and other metaphors to help us find our way through the debris of the storms that gather around us.