When I wrote my previous post about the abject chaos and sheer awfulness that has befallen the Gulf Coast and in particular New Orleans...I was referrring to the fact that I was confused as to how the world's most powerful nation could not react more quickly and more effectively to this disaster...I was not referring to the evil behaviour of the band of people roaming the streets and taking advantage of the hungry, thirsty, bereft and homeless citizens....then I read the comment from Stefan and Dave...
"It's very sad. It seems to prove the point of the original Calvinist Puritans, or Thomas Hobbes, that believed that man is fundamentally evil. Certainly my faith in humanity is shaken."
It really made me think....obviously I have a fundamental lack of faith in the human race as the awful behaviour of the few was something that I almost expected and have been surprised that so much has been made of it - I can't believe how awful that sounds and equally how awful I feel realising that...I honestly cannot say what it is that has made me that cynical or untrusting...however, thanks for the comment...it certainly made me realise that my outlook on life is very skewed.
"It's very sad. It seems to prove the point of the original Calvinist Puritans, or Thomas Hobbes, that believed that man is fundamentally evil. Certainly my faith in humanity is shaken."
It really made me think....obviously I have a fundamental lack of faith in the human race as the awful behaviour of the few was something that I almost expected and have been surprised that so much has been made of it - I can't believe how awful that sounds and equally how awful I feel realising that...I honestly cannot say what it is that has made me that cynical or untrusting...however, thanks for the comment...it certainly made me realise that my outlook on life is very skewed.
posted by Madame Chiang at 10:32 pm
3 Comments:
It is important to look at the "where" in this equation. Notice that Mississipi and Alabama have banded together more than New Orleans has. New Orleans has some unique things that work against it.
In particular the fact that the wealthier folks all live out of town and the less wealthy folks live in the city..
An it is a town whose police and services are not the best......
Agree with Skippy. The 'where' is important. I've been musing on how other places in the world might react to a similar event. Can't imagine the Japanese descending to anarchy like this. Australians, yes. Londoners, maybe. Hong Kongers, I don't think so.
Two interesting editorials in the New York Times today about the disaster. The first, by Frank Rich, compared the Katrina disaster to the Titanic, in that the survival rates of the wealthy and those with access to a car was far higher than those without, particularly the poor urban blacks.
I suppose my shock at the violence in New Orleans was shared by other Americans; David Brooks had this to say: "The scrapbook of history accords but a few pages to each decade, and it is already clear that the pages devoted to this one will be grisly. There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them.
It's already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade. Americans have had to acknowledge dark realities that it is not in our nature to readily acknowledge: the thin veneer of civilization, the elemental violence in human nature, the lurking ferocity of the environment, the limitations on what we can plan and know, the cumbersome reactions of bureaucracies, the uncertain progress good makes over evil."
America has a dual personality, one that accommodates two fundamentally opposed viewpoints on life - one is this Puritan belief in the evil within man and the need to control it with force; the other is this idealistic streak that brought about global experiments like the League of Nations and the United Nations. I guess people can call us hypocrites, but the truth is always more complex...
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