Volume III. No. 23
 01-02-05
 A Sea-Borne Disaster That Reminds Us Of Our Place 
 author: Vance Cureton
 © Copyright 2005
 

 Take one ancient religion and a madman and you get 9/11. Take one arrogant,
 self-righteous, over-confident U.S. President and you get the ugly debacle 
 that is the Iraq War. This is how humanity turns what should be a time of 
 unprecedented world peace and prosperity into endless conflict. Disputes 
 rage, based upon alleged transgressions centuries old. Or anger over economic 
 exploitation.  And let us not forget the familiar suspects; religious bigotry, 
 racism, and ethnic hatred.

 At a time when modern medicine turns a killer disease like AIDS into a chronic
 ailment, or when man-made robots can use common radio waves to ferry awe 
 inspiring photographs of the cosmos back to Earth from millions of miles away. 
 We as human beings are still not content. We struggle. We fight. We find 
 endless reasons to despise one another. --- All too often on account of our 
 selfish perception that we are more important { or beloved } by our creator, 
 than the next group.

 On Sunday past, an earthquake that registered 9.0 on the richter scale created
 a tsunami { tidal wave } that arose out of the sea, and that would mean certain 
 death to what may - at final count - be more than 200,000 people across a wide 
 swath of islands that ranged all the way from Indonesia to the east coast of 
 distant Africa.

 Two hundred thousand people gone. Wiped out. Not by a nuclear bomb, or
 weeks of violent warfare, but just as the result of a simple undersea earthquake.

 Thus, the power of Mother Nature has given us sqabbling beings something 
 to think about. We are at the mercy of forces on this planet that are not influenced
 by race, wealth, class, or religion. Forces that can smite us all in an instant. And 
 as we proclaim jihad or complain about "why don't those people over there get 
 it?" We should take a moment from our selfish obsessions to take a look at the BIG 
 PICTURE.

 Our position on this planet remains precarious. If some incurable disease far 
 worse than the human immunodeficiency virus, doesn't get us. Geological forces 
 certainly have that potential. For planet Earth is still very much alive. The core 
 of our Earth is believed by scientists to be molten, kept that way by residual heat 
 from our planet's birth, and the slow decay of certain radioactive elements. This 
 is not a dead rock we inhabit. In fact, for most of human history our species has 
 been extremely lucky that momentous global catastrohies have not occuried 
 during the time of man. For it would take just one or two simultaneous major 
 volcanic eruptions { three or four times the magnitude of the Mt. St. Helen's 
 erupton of 1980 } to make the death toll of the recent tsumani to seem as nothing. 
 MILLIONS would die of hunger and famine. The partial blocking out of the
 rays of the sun by volcanic ash and dust in the high atmosphere would mean 
 devastation of food crops world-wide.

 The effect could last for months, if not years. -- And there would be nary 
 a thing our bickering governments could do about it.

 So, as we move into the new year and the global relief effort for the tsunami 
 victims gains momentum. Let us take a moment to reflect upon how lucky 
 we are as a race to have made it this far. 98 percent of the animal species that 
 have ever existed have already gone extinct.

 Certainly, mankind's number will also come up. We just don't know when.
 

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