[Mb-civic] Nature's Wrath, Man's Mistakes - Ellen Ruppel Shell - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Nature's Wrath, Man's Mistakes
Our Hubris and Folly

By Ellen Ruppel Shell
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Page B01

Hurricane Katrina's devastation of the Gulf Coast last week offered a 
terrifying reminder of the impact of floods on human history. Almost 
every culture seems to harbor its flood myth. According to Greek 
folklore, early humans were punished for their wickedness by a vengeful 
god, who stirred up a torrential storm and commanded the oceans to rise, 
drowning every living thing. In Welsh mythology, the lake of Llion 
overflows, swamping everything save the Celtic heroes Dwyfan and Dwyfach 
who escape the waters in a mastless ship packed with two of every 
species. (Sound familiar?) And in Kenya, legend holds that the ocean 
once fit in a small pot owned by a poor couple. The husband warned his 
daughter-in-law never to touch it, explaining that it held the remains 
of their honored ancestors. She couldn't resist, the pot shattered, and 
-- you guessed it -- a flood drowned every living thing.

This is the general pattern: Heedless humans bringing on not only their 
own demise, but the demise of everything around them. Not all flood 
myths adhere to this formula, though. Take the Confucian version. The 
story begins in the usual manner, with the king asking his faithful 
minister, Gun, to save the country from rising waters. Unfortunately, 
Gun is an arrogant guy and thinks he can control nature. For nine years 
he labors, building dam after dam to stem the raging tide. As each dam 
falls apart, the waters rage ever stronger. Eventually, the king wises 
up, banishes Gun, and orders Gun's son, Yu, to have a go. A humble man, 
Yu quietly studies the problem and concludes that attempting to 
constrain nature is futile. Rather than build dams, he gently channels 
the flood waters into an irrigation system. The crops bloom, the waters 
recede, the people are saved and Yu is anointed king.

Americans seem not to know Yu's story, for we insist on defying nature. 
We blithely set sail on churning seas and fly into stormy skies. We 
build homes on unstable hillsides, and communities in woodlands ripe for 
fire. We rely on technology and the government's largess to protect us 
from our missteps, and usually, that is enough. But sometimes nature 
outwits the best human efforts to contain it. Last week's hurricane was 
a horrifying case in point. The resulting flooding offered brutal 
evidence that the efforts we have made over the years to contain nature 
-- with channels and levees and other great feats of engineering -- can 
contribute to greater catastrophes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/02/AR2005090202688.html
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