Paradise Lost

Over the past couple of weeks, we have witnessed the fury of Nature let loose on the hapless people of California.

The city of Paradise was lost, bringing to mind lines from John Milton’s Paradise Lost:

Farewell happy Fields Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

The image that serves as a motto for this post is the woodcut by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528, Germany’s greatest Renaissance artist) The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - pestilence, war, famine, and death – from a reference to Rev. 6, 2-8. which prophesies the ultimate judgment upon mankind.

Thanks to the heroic efforts of the firefighters, the number of fatalities in the California fires was less than it might have been. Hats off to them! And words of sympathy and encouragement to the people of California. We are with you! Those words are so feeble in the face of such a catastrophe, which to the people living through that hell must have seemed like the apocalypse prophesied in Revelation.

The property damage was enormous, and thousands of people are in shock, wondering how they can pick up the pieces of their lives.

Like the victims of the Florida hurricanes, they will find the courage to go on. It is just amazing how tough people are. In the remote past, our species faced greater challenges during the ice ages, when we were reduced to a very small number.

I would not like to entertain the thought that these fires were set. That would mean that of all the great natural disasters, man is the greatest disaster for himself.

In calamities on a scale such as this one, the federal government in the name of social solidarity, which is not charity, ought to assist local authorities with funds to help the victims, mindful of the fact that we, too, could be victims someday.

We live on a violent planet. At any given moment, 40 volcanoes are active, and others long dormant are awakening from their centuries’-long slumber. Earthquakes of greater or lesser intensity are common. Many of them cause tsunamis, like the 2004 tsunami triggered by a massive 9.1 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra at a depth of 30 km that claimed 230,000 lives. Many parts of the world are plagued by cyclones and tornadoes that destroy everything in their path. Floods claim the most victims. The Huang He floods in China (1887, 1931, 1938) killed millions and are considered to be the deadliest floods in history. The Mississippi flood of 1927, one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States, inundated an area of 23,000 square miles and killed thousands of people.

The list of natural disasters that have afflicted humanity since recorded history would fill a thick volume.

The book to read is Lee Allyn Davis, Natural Disasters. Infobase, 2010, which describes 500 natural calamities and how they changed history.

The Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755 destroyed the city and claimed more than 50,000 lives. The disaster inspired Voltaire to write Candide, which lampooned Leibniz’s contention that this is “the best of all possible worlds.” God, by implication, was put in the dock and charged with complicity for allowing such evils to take place.

Was Leibniz naïve? On the contrary, he was well aware of the evil in the world – natural evil (calamities) and metaphysical (moral) evil (. He defended God in his last major work, Theodicy, which some critics regard as unconvincing.

Life hangs by a thread. Seneca said, No man can be surer of tomorrow than any other man.

Memento mori – Remember death (see a previous post). Always keep in mind our mortality so we can use every single hour and every day granted to us to the fullest. In thinking of death, embrace life no matter what – Amor fati.

When astronauts look at the Earth from space, they see The Pale Blue Dot (Random House, 2011) teeming with life that Carl Sagan described in his book of that name. . That is our tiny home. Our habitat is much smaller even than the planet, 71=percent of which consists of oceans. How much is left of 500 million square kilometers of the Earth’s total area after we subtract deserts, the poles, and mountainous regions? One hundred million square kilometers of real estate and two hundred quarreling nations. As far as we know, there are no other planets that can support life, but with a billion or more galaxies in the Universe, by the law of large numbers, there could be. So perhaps Leibniz was right after all. This is the best of all possible worlds (the only one possible?). Is anybody out there?

Pascal said, The silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me.

Copernicus, on the contrary, said, For what could be more beautiful than the Heavens, which contain all beautiful things?

The former was a pessimist, the latter, an optimist. Which one do you choose?

Sub specie alternates (in the light of eternity) how stupid and pointless our fratricidal quarrels seem.

Pardon’s the word to all are the words of forgiveness that Cymbeline utters at the end of Shakespeare’s play of that name after five acts of treachery, deceit, and murder.

Those are words that could have come from God himself.

Why is it so hard for us to forgive?

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