[Rhodes22-list] Evolution in Action?

[Robert Skinner]

The New Colossus 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" 

/Emma Lazarus

---------------------------------------------

Yes, many of the poor were unprepared.

They were also unmotivated, uneducated,
and the cultural descendants of two 
populations who were forcibly transported 
from their native lands (Acadia and Africa) 
where they were doing quite well, thank you.

So are we now going to say that their personal
and immediate failings are sufficient to 
justify a social Darwinism? -- one where we are
observers of evolution in action as these
humans, for all their faults, are allowed
to sink further into the social, political,
and economic mire that is the aftermath of 
Katrina?

Or do we view the events from a higher
altitude and see the current situation as the
continuation of trends that began a couple
of hundred years ago?

We can conclude that we have set up systems
that support and reward sloth and short-
sighted thinking, but that does not absolve
us from a requirement to do what we can to
alleviate the suffering of our fellow man.

Instead, it fixes the responsibility on us
to re-invent the social support mechanisms
so that they reward personal initiative while 
providing at least the bare minimums of
life, health, and education support.

Let's get on with the social and political
repairs, and worry less about who screwed 
up.  As a perceptive denizen of the swamp
observed, "We have met the enemy, and he is 
us."*  Not you, not me, but "us".

To make physical repairs without concurrent
social, political, and economic repairs is to 
perpetuate the real suffering that resulted 
from Katrina.

It's time to think outside the levee.

-- 
Robert Skinner

* http://www.igopogo.com/we_have_met.htm