Richard Louv of the San Diego Union Tribune hits the nail on the head as he surveys the preparation and response to Hurricane Katrina.
Forget nature; the real problem is human nature.
Most people living on the Gulf Coast simply prefer to take their chances. So do Californians who live on the slippery bluffs of Malibu.
And San Diegans? Even after the devastating 2003 firestorms that marched from Cuyamaca to Scripps Ranch and back again, we seem to prefer denial and deflection.
Instead of investing in the creation of new firefighting technologies – including the use of unmanned aerial vehicles that could spot and even fight fires – we look to old technology, but even avoid simple fees that would upgrade our old-fashioned, out-dated firefighting tools. When it comes to enforcing tougher fire-resistance building standards, we wiggle and dissemble like teenagers facing homework on a sunny weekend. We prefer our risks manageable, and our thinking small.
Instead of preparing for true dangers posed by natural forces, people prefer to obsess about the relatively smaller threats of terrorism (but refuse to pay adequately for prevention in that arena, as well).
Or, more often, we fixate on the smallest of societal risks. Less than a month before Katrina's bad breath battered Florida, Broward County schools, in an effort to cut down on injuries and lawsuits, erected "Rules of the Playground" at 137 elementary schools. No more swings, teeter-totters or hand-pulled merry-go-rounds. And "no running," the new signs said, even as Katrina approached.
Kids running. Now there's a manageable threat.
And when things are changing very rapidly as they are now doing, there is no viable option to dealing with the data and trying to slough off our prejudices and conditioning. Things no longer mean what we believed them to mean, systems are breaking down and will shift hugely before they restabilise, we cannot fly on auto, we cannot assume that tomorrow will be mostly like to day but a bit more so.
Freud said that people cannot cope with too much reality and retreat into what amounts to a fantasy world. Many citizens of New Orleans heard Mayor Nagin's order to evacuate the city over the weekend. Some dealt with the reality and left, some were trapped by their poverty, but others preferred to retreat into their fantasy world, some of their bodies are now floating in the polluted waters that fill the city.
If we can't take too much reality, we can be dead certain that reality can more than take us.
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