Hurricane Sandy’s Wake Up Call: What Will It Take To Bring People Into Balance With Nature?

Instinctive Human Nature Tries To Exploit Even The Most Horrendous Catastrophes For Self Gain

The article “The politics of Hurricane Sandy” on the pages of The Economist, analyzes the election campaign consequences of the devastating Hurricane sweeping the US East Coast:

Is Hurricane Sandy capable of altering the election result? The presidential candidates are hunkering down and trying to avoid looking partisan as this big, wet storm heads for the eastern seaboard. But any number of calculations are being made by the campaigns. Plausible arguments are flying, explaining why this storm is bad news, or is it good news, for both sides.”

In truth this behavior is completely the opposite to how we should be looking at the current events. Many people would say that humans have nothing to do with these storms, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. Every time there is a debate about global warming, or other man-made affects on the environment,  many people, including leaders and scientists try everything they can do to prove that humanity, human behavior has nothing to do with these “cyclical natural” changes.

Instead Of The Subjective Examination & The Denial Of Human Involvement In Natural, Environmental Changes, People Need To Examine The “Human Effect” In The Earth’s Living Ecosystem

A step by step examination, looking at the world in terms of the dynamics of living ecosystems, might suggest a different picture, where perhaps even such changes as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have relation to how human beings behave.

1. It is widely accepted that the whole Earth (possibly the whole Universe) is a single, interconnected, living ecosystem.
2. This ecosystem as any other living system thrives for overall harmony and homeostasis as this is the foundation of life, and the whole evolutionary process is progressing towards more and more evolved and stable lifeforms.
3. There is no question that human beings are also part of this ecosystem. The biological human body, even the human psyche, is based on the same laws of general balance and homeostasis, and when this balance is broken people become sick, even die.
4. Despite all this, humanity as a species is totally out of balance with the rest of nature, while any other living creature lives in balance with its environment, only consuming and taking what is necessary for its existence. Humans take much more than is necessary, and especially in the last century humanity created a completely artificial bubble with the constant quantitative growth economy, with its overproduction and overconsumption of unnecessary and mostly harmful products. In the process, as proven by the deepening global crisis, a global humanity exhausted both the natural and the human resources driving into a dead end.
5. Humanity at present behaves as a cancer in the vast surrounding natural system.
6. The natural, living ecosystem around is not “mindless,” its laws are fine tuned towards preserving life, the general harmony and homeostasis as the foundation of life.
7. Concluding from all the above, it is not far fetched to conclude that the vast surrounding natural system that is infinitely larger then the human species would react against humans as a healthy body would react against a disease or a foreign body, i.e. in a way that tries to reject it.

If humanity wants to “pacify” nature, moreover wants to survive as a species within the evolutionary process there is no other choice but to reveal and follow the basic principles of the natural system, principles people all know very well from their own body’s biology and physiology.

Humanity Needs To Accept & Understand That As Any Other Living Species, It Is Part Of A Vast “Self Adjusting” Natural System, Infinitely Greater Than The Human Species

Humanity has to give up the misunderstanding that people are above nature and can control it, or that natural laws do not apply to humans, or that evolution has stopped by the emergence of a modern humanity. Hurricane Sandy as well as the many other natural disasters where people can neither properly predict or defend themselves, are timely reminders of this fact.

A Predictable And Sustainable Future Is Possible If Humanity Settles Into The Interconnected Natural System As Its Partner, Adapting To Its Laws & Principles

The superiority of human beings above other animals comes from the fact that humans are capable of changing themselves. To be more precise, to change their inherent self centered nature in order to achieve balance in human society and between humanity and the environment. Animals, on the other hand, are instinctively balanced with nature. This conscious change and adaption, if it were to happen, would give people total control over the whole system, to the extent that they remain benevolent partners with it.

Image: “Hurricane Bud” by NASA Earth Observatory from Flickr