Watching the news earlier today – Rita follows Katrina – I was struck by this thought: there are some places on earth that we weren’t meant to inhabit. Not that Houston or New Orleans are necessarily two of them (though building below sea level is always a fraught project, surely), but there are places that we shouldn’t be.
In other words, this planet is not a play-pen. It wasn’t designed as a cotton-wool safety-zone full of comforts and spring water. There are dangers. Volcanoes. Treacherous mountain tops. Precarious glaciers. Swelling rivers. Landslides. Tornadoes. Blizzards.
Humankind as Native would not have stayed in these places. But in our technological arrogance and economic myopia we’ve decided that we have to. The price? Every so often the poor get washed away. “They’ll always be with us” someone once said. In every city the rich live on high.
There’s something that resonates with Genesis and the sweet apple here. It’s as if God warned us that not everywhere was suitable, but we refused to listen. We had to go there. Like children playing in the knife draw, surprised by blood and cuts.
Will someone someday lament the snowstorms from their Everest-top house?
Come down.
Come down.
Comments
One response to “Don’t Even Go There | Planet Playpen”
It has always struck me that e.g. developing towns on faultlines to house communties that grow up around mineral extraction/mining etc. then asking “WHere is God?” when an earthquake hits is just a little questionable.