Can you hear the ticking of the death watch?
It’s been said that mankind, if given enough time, can get used to anything — and that’s not said without reason. History offers hundreds of examples of seemingly unlivable conditions. Consider the sheep-like acceptance of such unthinkable regimes as the Spanish Inquisition or, in more modern times, the events surrounding World War II.
Human beings can get used to anything, whether or not it is healthy for them to do so. It seems to be hardwired into our nature.
It’s hard to say exactly when the idea that our steadfast, powerful, modern civilization could be thrown down and destroyed first arose. It might have been with the dehumanizing warfare of World War I or possibly with the mechanized terror and mass slaughter of the second world war.
Most likely, the idea first came when the reality of what we had wrought hit home: We have finally succeeded in building machines that can destroy us. The United States spent nearly half a century living in ever-rising fear of the power of the atomic bomb, even into the late 1980s and early 1990s. Somehow, though, we seem to have forgotten about that now, in the digital age. It’s not that the threat is gone, or the technology lost. We’ve simply put it out of our minds. There are too many other things to worry about in this new and ever-accelerating world we’ve built for ourselves.
Now we’ve seen firsthand how quickly the structure of things can break down. And the weapon that brought that structure to its knees? Some new bomb, some monstrous perversion of chemical warfare? No. Just a hurricane. One hurricane. That was all it took wipe away our hard-won illusion of somehow being better — more civilized, more educated, more rational — than any Third World country or struggling backwater republic.
After three days, we had looting, raping, terror on the streets, shoot-to-kill orders, madness and hysteria. Those are OUR people down there, suffering, clutching at each other like refugees of a war between the gods. Our people. Our country.
We have gone so long here without a major catastrophe that we have forgotten how fragile our world is. Middle-aged men who have never known a day’s hardship can sit and watch the world filtered through their television screens and feel above it all, somehow, better than the rabble in those other countries or cities. They can share their views about those things to their children, who take it as gospel, and go on to grow up in a world they believe they control.
I’m no different. I’m no better. I don’t know what it’s like to live in fear, and I’ve never gone a day when I was unsure whether I would find anything to eat or sleep on.
I watch what has happened in New Orleans, and like so many of my friends, the strongest emotion I feel is not hate or sadness but panic. Something has gone very, very wrong.
We live in the shadow of destruction. Everything we’ve built, the civilization we’ve worked so long to create, could be wiped away without a second glance. Between human nature and Mother Nature, it’s only a matter of time. And the death watch is ticking.
Listen.
You can hear it.
Write to Jonathan at
tenement_cellar@msn.com
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