Disaster Strikes

Its hard to imagine what the population of Honshu and Japan are going through now. As a world citizen, the atomic meltdown threat has an enormous impact on me and i am many thousand miles away. I am not scared for my health. People in this country are buying those tablets. The planes are being checked for radiation. Thats ridiculous -at least the former action is. But it proves what the disaster sets in motion. A huge collective consciousness quake.

Radiation is an invisible enemy - like a ghost. Its scary - like disease. Its the monster under the bed that awakes from the eternal hibernation we thought it was in. Nuclear energy is so powerful a force we cant control it if its powers are unleashed. We all know this. So why oh why - do we want it. In Japan they wanted loads of new plants - even at the plant Fukushima they were planning new reactors. Well it solves so much for so many human enterprises, but at what prize- at what risk?
And is it a risk we are willing to take- in the future...

The future? We all want a future.. In fact the whole world wants and desires a whole lot for the future. Better economies, education, benefit from the technological and scientific development, financial security, a safe society free of crime and disease, health care,  life challenges, children ...

Cars, computers, houses, schools, medicine ...

What happens when it all washes away with the tsunami? Thats the fear the Japanese disaster evokes. We work so hard for a better day, only to see the tsunami wash it all away ... Or the nuclear fire. When you see the pictures you can see how the tsunami washes everything away, see the cars turning on the street and speeding up in the opposite direction. Its terrifying. Not like a disaster film, because its real. But its still a film for me. A film that reminds me of how fragile our existence is - not how fragile my life is our how tiny my life is compared to the size of the universe. I knew that already I already realised that deep down in my soul. I did not however quite realise how fragile the whole western civilisation - the global growth- is. Japan have worked very hard for their achievements - and the battle has not been lost yet - but they must feel gutted. They must feel that its so unfair that it has to hit them. I know their religious notions tell them to show their collective strength at the time of crisis - i know they will always rise again - they just work harder. But they are paying the ultimate prize right now in tha battle between man and nature that the usage of nuclear energy symbolizes. The way we use the material world as means to an end.

We could use natural energy that does not involve high risk fuel. We could drive bicycles and not cars. We could travel by ship and not plane. We could make food in villages and not in factories. We in the west have learned to rely on "higher forces" to claim the right to use nature at its upmost level. We cant fight tsunamis, but we dont have to have nuclear plants that can be hit by tsunamis. That a political choice the world collective consciousness seems to have accepted.

But this disaster could shift this political consciousness.  It could start new green movements that majorities would support. Because it has made the porblem of western growth so blatant. Instead of discussing how to make tsunamiproof cooling systems - it could force us to adress our priorities at large. It should. If the zeros was focused on a fight against terror after 9-11, the new decade could actually be a fight for a better climate, less pollution and a balanced technology. A debate that as general agenda of the world was left somewhere in the sixties.

I would like to finish with a line from a Spirit song: Its NAtures Way of Telling You Somethings Wrong" . Its not gods wrath, or us getting what we deserve. Its NATURE. NATURE NATURE NATURE. It might as well be a god, but we can look at objectively and say. Should I build a house of hay, sticks or brick? Should I fly with wings of wax towards the sun or stay on the ground? REAL QUESTIONS for a REAL world.