Essay on Katrina

Wow. I just went to the "Operation Eden" blog. Amazing pics on this blog. Very personal. I'm sitting here listening to NPR talk about the fiscal impact Katrina will have on our national economy. Now they're talking about oil refineries in the gulf. It takes oil and money to run this country that's understandable but... it just doesn't feel right. The contrast of this man's personal struggle to comprehend this major trauma and these talking heads blabbing about money and oil. It seems to me government and media have forgotten why there is a country in the first place. People make a country. Without people, money wouldn't exist and the oil would continue to hide in the caverns of earth.

So where does a person draw the line between the people and it's oil and money? It's hard to separate the people from money and oil. After all, we have to work to pay the bills and drive our cars. And if you don't work, drive a car and pay your bills you're looked down upon as a bum, mooch, crazy - a half person. I'm not exempt. I smell the bum on the street and pity the half person he has become. But I also wonder how he lost that other half. What could happen to a person to tear them in half? A hurricane? War? Bad genes? A corrupt and cold society? A bad attitude? Addiction? Divorce?...

How many of us now unconsciously look at these hurricane victims as half people because they don't have a home or a job? What kind of flawed society teaches us to view people, our fellow humans, in this way? This is why all this talk of money and oil bothers me a little. Because we're working so hard to make these people whole again by giving them money and oil. But we're not made of money and oil. We're made of water, emotions, bones, thoughts, blood, creativity, memories, values....

You've got to wonder if there isn't a sickness in a society created by humans that tries to fix people with parts that don't fit. How did such a wonderful, exotic and complicated thing (society, culture) created by wonderful, inventive and extraordinary creatures become so sick and perverted that it tries to fix people with the wrong parts? It's like tying to fix a car with tree branches.