Monday, May 19, 2008

What a day! Disaster fatigue and computer-disrupting ants!

First there's a piece on disaster fatigue, in which one donor says of the China earthquake and Myanmar cyclone disasters: "If you thought about at this very second the number of people who were suffering and dying, I could dedicate all my resources to that and yet it would be a drop in the bucket." This is the nightmare I was referring to in my talk at the end of the Story Field Conference last August. True, earthquakes are not human-caused, but poorly constructed buildings are, and so are (to an increasing extent) more powerful cyclones. As are unjust governmental and economic systems that increase human suffering during such disasters.

The answer for that donor is to donate to efforts to change the human systems that generate ecological damage and human suffering. I addressed this in my articles "Does Compassion need to evolve?" and "Learning from our Evolutionary past into our Evolutionary future".

Then there's the article about the billions of rapidly spreading alien ants in Texas that are -- among many other things -- messing up computers and other electronics. And they don't respond to normal pesticides...

No comments: