I've been on a diary recycling kick lately, digging up ancient (and neglected) nuggets from my formative years as a DKOS poster, hoping that they might catch some more attention the second time around.
Today's "recyclement" is something I wrote on January 2, 2005, in the wake of the Christmas Tsunami.
It was intended to be a message to those who style themselves masters of the world, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Events in the Middle East suggest to me that perhaps they need to hear the message again.
The same events suggest to me that perhaps we could all stand to be reminded that there are concerns that trump even the most compelling of disputes over land, and water, and faith, the power and privilege of states, and those who would become states unto themselves.
It is the wellspring of almost all life on this planet, and much of its death.
It covers as much of the Earth's surface as eight Asias...or 245 Alaskas. And that's just the surface area.
Virtually all weather, all climate, all rain and much of the movement of the continents themselves is driven by weight of one single vast pool of water, with a mass of 1.4 x 10^21 kilograms -- only the Sun, the planets and the very largest moons of the Solar System are larger.
Sometimes, people wonder if we have a second Moon; we do, one with a perigee of low tide, an apogee of high tide, and a mean radius of sea level.
Others suggest that our world is misnamed (that would be Arthur C. Clarke), that the third planet from the Sun should have been named Ocean, not Earth.
It is difficult to contest that point, after the devastation of the past week, a reminder that we are not the masters of this world...
...that vast 1.4 quintillion-ton Colossus brushing past continents as if they were blades of grass is.
What is most unsettling to me about the Asian Tsunami is not the death toll, or even the stuttering, stammering response of the captains of Humanity in response to the cataclysm.
What catches my attention is that it was a relatively minor tsunami, and it brushed aside all pretense of human mastery of the Earth instantly.
Relatively minor, an sideshow to the powerful earthquake in Indonesia, and it conveyed more energy and devastation across the waves than ten thousand hurricanes, and in one-hundredth of the time....and hurricanes are humbling experiences all by themselves.
Imagine the damage to a carefully-constructed image of power and control, of being the hero, the protector, the deliverer. Such a person's reputation, even their self-image, depends on being master of the elements, since that is in effect what his press corps is claiming.
King Canute of the Danes once set his throne by the shore of the North Sea, and commanded the waves to stop; he fared poorly in that endeavor.
Of course, the King of the Danes already knew the lesson that the current captains of Humanity don't quite get.
The following excerpt is most illuminating:
A hundred years or more after the time of Alfred the Great there was a king of England named Canute [English name for "Knut"]. King Canute was a Dane; but the Danes were not so fierce and cruel then as they had been when they were at war with King Alfred.
The great men and officers who were around King Canute were always praising him. "You are the greatest man that ever lived," one would say. Then another would say, "O king! there can never be another man so mighty as you." And another would say, "Great Canute, there is nothing in the world that dares to disobey you." The king was a man of sense, and he grew very tired of hearing such foolish speeches.
One day he was by the seashore, and his officers were with him. They were praising him, as they were in the habit of doing. He thought that now he would teach them a lesson, and so he bade them set his chair on the beach close by the edge of the water.
"Am I the greatest man in the world?" he asked.
"O king!" they cried, "there is no one so mighty as you."
"Do all things obey me?" he asked.
"There is nothing that dares to disobey you, O king!" they said. "The world bows before you, and gives you honour."
"Will the sea obey me?" he asked; and he looked down at the little waves which were lapping the sand at his feet.
The foolish officers were puzzled, but they did not dare to say "No."
"Command it, O king! and it will obey," said one.
"Sea," cried Canute, "I command you to come no farther! Waves, stop your rolling, and do not dare to touch my feet!"
But the tide came in, just as it always did. The water rose higher and higher. It came up around the king's chair, and wet not only his feet, but also his robe. His officers stood about him, alarmed, and wondering whether he was not mad. Then Canute took off his crown, and threw it down upon the sand.
"I shall never wear it again," he said. "And do you, my men, learn a lesson from what you have seen. There is only one King who is all-powerful; and it is he who rules the sea, and holds the ocean in the hollow of his hand. It is he whom you ought to praise and serve above all others."
Then there is the matter of what a 'major' tsunami looks like.
Well...it looks a lot like like this
Yes, that statistic is right. The wave was 1,720 feet high.
And that scoring along the shores of the fjord is where the trees were a second before the wave ground the mountainsides down to bedrock.
The ocean is the wellspring of life, but it holds the power of death in its thrashing grasp, as well.
To live in sight of the sea, even for a brief time, is to be in the presence of power. The appropriate emotional and spiritual response is awe.
If there is a physical manifestation of deity in this world, it is not in sacred rocks, rituals or the relics of saints.
And the Ocean is, blessings and curses, wrath and forgiveness, life and death.
And there is nothing on Earth that even compares in power to it, and there are far more powerful forces beyond this sphere, just accounting for the observed phenomena.
And this is the universe we reside in, not as masters, but as refugees from our ignorance, living on borrowed time until we can take up our penance as worthy trustees of this world...and of each other.
Such hardships as the recent disaster are not deliberate object lessons; the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami are nothing more than faint echoes of the formation of the Earth and the Oceans, of a time of titanic, incessant upheaval.
Regardless, there is much to be learned in our own saga, for so long as Humanity resides on this Earth, in sight of this Ocean, we have, are, and always will be forced to respond to challenges of this nature.
The Ocean surpasses us; it is unlikely that this will change soon, and the motions of the Earth beneath will never be bridled without truly Herculean labors.
But we should never find ourselves surpassed by our own self-interest in such moments. For the Ocean is everywhere, the driver of weather and waters even thousands of miles inland; all of us are on the shore, at all times.
For that reason, it is right to help in Asia, to brush past posturing, polemicizing fools and be neighborly and civilized and worthy of the trusteeship that is offered to all who would take up the vocation...and yet refused by so many.
The Ocean is everywhere, and we are dwellers by the seaside, ever in the shadow of a power that neither strong king nor weak prince can command.
And the Ocean brings us together, albeit not always in the way that we would be united. Sometimes it is a gathering of fears, at other times of tears. And yet, the waves recede, and the memories are gathered, and cherished, and life by the sea remains.
And we hear the promises of security against the tsunami, and smile sadly and think "What fools!" as their helicopters and cameras and soundbites float away. They rise above earth and ocean, thinking themselves masters of both, yet the very air holding them aloft is but the breath of the sea.
Then we turn to count the living, and prepare the dead, and do as humans always do in the wake of sorrow: rebuild ourselves, one newborn at a time, and watch the children that remain play in the waves.