Search This Blog

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Orders of Magnitude

It used to be that when I read books, I would come across things like "spiritual crisis"  - Olaf Stapledon was fond of saying such things - and I, thank heavens, hadn't a clue what he was talking about, because he had gone through World War I, and I had not.
I then came across things from others, and these had been through World War II, and the Holocaust, and I had not really been touched by those things intimately.

It's different now.
If the trouble in the Gulf of Mexico is on a scale mid-way between the best and worst estimates, we are looking at the greatest man-made environmental disaster in history; bet you didn't think anyone would top Chernobyl for baneful environmental impacts. Once again we've topped the Roosskis!

I was really hoping not to have too many spiritual crises that span the entire social structure in my lifetime, but we have to take it as we get it. Now voters are rejecting incumbents from both parties in primaries; anger is not a sufficient guide for the future...  especially anger in the hands of people who are part of a society which has been corrupt for over a generation.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This one, as you probably know, touches me right where I live. I, too, see this catastrophe in the Gulf as a black metaphor for the state of humanity, the state of our own souls. I have been depressed for a month and the photographs of the oil reaching the Louisiana wetlands breaks my heart, kills my soul. We are truly a doomed and hopeless people. Yea, even this causes no perceptible softening in the hearts of the masters. Their script is the same: make others pay.

Montag said...

What passes for intelligent people are saying the regulatory system overseeing this is broken...

It never worked. It was never really supposed to "work", it was just supposed to give the illusion of due diligence, and shut up critics.

When has the regulatory system of anything worked recently?