humans try to conquer nature, fail

In light of the current crisis and tragedy in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina, I've been musing on the hubris of human (or perhaps just American?) engineering. Certainly no one can control the devastation wreaked by a natural disaster, but what has really led to the catastrophe in New Orleans is the fact that the city is built in a geographical area below sea level in the Mississippi River delta that, as dickumbrage put it, "would be underwater but for the grace of the Army Corps of Engineers."

In the nineteenth and twentieth century, apparently, Americans decided that they could conquer nature. The fact that California was a big fucking desert was no problem to clever engineers who could figure out how to pump water there for happy little suburban lawns. Nor did anyone seem to think it a bad idea to build multi-million dollar beach homes 50 feet away from the Atlantic surf. Or, for that matter, inexpensive homes in hurricane-prone coastland. And though I don't know the history of New Orleans, I do know that the only time you should build a major city on top of a swamp is when a magical bird eats a snake on it.

Nature is relentless, and there are some places that is just doesn't make sense for people to live. Us egotistical humans have a hard time accepting that fact. People don't want to be told their beautiful beach house is eventually going to be washed away, nor do people (like the residents of New Orleans) want to be told that the city they've lived in all their life is disaster waiting to happen (or as it is now, happened). We fork over a few million dollars at it for man-made tactics to stall the inevitable, all the while pretending the inevitable isn't.

Oh, and your Jeep Grand Cherokee is not fucking capable of driving through 4 feet of water, no matter what you saw in the commercial.