Last September 30, a calamitous amount of rain fell on our city. It flooded for the first time in most people’s memories the city that seems so insulated from natural disasters. Of course we are used to man made disasters such as crime, poverty and injustice. But never has nature dealt in this magnitude such death and reversal of fortune on the people of the metropolis.
Of course, we are aware of the fact that worst things have hit more people more often in the countryside. And perhaps we are being a bit over dramatic and soft-bellied when we keep talking about how badly we were hit and how terrible the suffering in the city is, but the simple fact is that our once unaffected city has become affected. Disasters always used to happen everywhere else but not here. That’s because we’re a city and, being that, we are constructed to be less vulnerable to nature’s movements. In this age of shifting climates, we are not so invulnerable.
There was a time that human ingenuity and creativity could assure us that nature could not throw anything our way that modern technology and engineering could not protect us from. I think that what we are realizing now is that this certainty is going to be less and less true in the coming times. Whether global warming is a human phenomenon or not (some say it’s still debatable) the simple fact is that weather conditions are changing and getting harsher. Everyone it seems is more vulnerable now and we should prepare to cope with our future climate.
How do we cope with the world as it changes? How can we face Mother Nature when she is clearly showing us that she is bigger than us and bigger than anything we can do? I think one way was exhibited by our university in the last two weeks.When the typhoon struck and we became aware of its adverse effects, we immediately responded. Thousands trooped to the covered courts, social networking instruments facilitated the flow of good will and social capital, donations poured in from everyone, and as best as we could, the university responded to the needs of communities all over the metropolis.
The university also showed how it is indeed a community—or perhaps, although this would make our friends from Europe cringe—a family. Beyond being an institution of anonymous people, we are a family where each person matters and each one should be accounted for and cared for and called to responsibility—not because it is their right or duty but because they are valued. We are a community in true solidarity that is gathered in realizing our best collective self when the call of responsibility comes. Most of all we are a family capable of sacrificing for one another.
We will need to strengthen this solidarity in the coming times because the world as we know it is coming to an end. Weather patterns are clearly changing and weather disturbances are intensifying. We had barely begun the work of rebuilding in the NCR when the city of Baguio and the towns of Pangasinan, Laguna, Cagayan, and Isabella went under in torrents of rain. Who knows if this will be followed by dry spells? If these conditions prevail we will have to redesign our farming methods and technologies. We will also have to rethink how our city is laid out and how our homes should be designed.
The weather aside, we will have to rethink our food production methods because the age of abundant petroleum is coming to an end. Almost everything in our food production system, from our fertilizers to our delivery systems, is petroleum dependent. We will also have to rethink our water supply system because although water will fall in destructive proportions, our drinking supply will begin to be depleted.
The calamities that befell us in the last three weeks could really signal the beginning of the end of the world as we know it, the end of our lives as we know it. The simple fact is that are just too many of us who live too long and consume in destructive proportions. Mother Earth cannot sustain our greedy, parasitic ways. We have come to a tipping point and at this point nature has to make adjustments to regain her balance. As she shifts, we could lose the very simple alignment of habitats that has sustained us. Like we saw in the last week, when nature has to readjust, the surest things on which we bet our lives—like how the water will stay in its place, how the air will always be breathable, how the earth is firm and well founded, and how the weather has a somewhat predictable cycle—become frighteningly unstable. And when nature moves, no one is safe no matter how well built the city.
Nature has shown us how it will move. Will we listen? We have no choice but to because our ways cannot be sustained. The basic fuel of mass consumption is almost completely sucked out of the earth. Soon we will reach the maximum carrying capacity of the earth. Whether we want to or not, we will have to make our own adjustments.
This might be a frightening time for many. Life as we know it must come to an end in order for us to build life as it ought to be. But this time is the perfect opportunity to rebuild human society in a way that is just to out better selves, our fellow human beings and the earth. It is a time for readjustments where humanity is given the opportunity to reimagine its broken self and find its fullest possibilities given how it has hurt itself and the earth.
The signs calling us to readjustment are frightening and quite wild. But in truth, it is an opportunity to come to our senses about who we are and what we can be. It is an opportunity to understand what a just economy is such that we are fair to our world and our fellow persons. Around the corner of this century could be a world order that decades of u
prisings and revolutions have not been able to achieve—i.e. a truly human world build by men and women who know better because they have been through the worst that they put themselves through.When the worst hit our city, without hesitation, our community rose to its better self and in solidarity served those who were hardest hit by the floods. We even took extreme measures to be available to those who would need us. If there is a sign of hope at that the end of the world as we know it will bring forth a better world to know, it is the fact that the seeds of a better society are in us already. Perhaps the end of the world will only spell the end of social structures that encrust our hearts and prevent us from being good people to one another. Perhaps the end of this world will serve to shatter the walls around the cities of our hearts that have gotten used to mindless consumption of the self and the other and allow to emerge a city founded on solidarity.
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