{"id":23264,"date":"2015-11-01T11:37:27","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T19:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=23264"},"modified":"2015-11-01T11:37:27","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T19:37:27","slug":"musings-on-fate-the-future-and-the-struggle-between-central-controllers-and-freedom-lovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/01\/musings-on-fate-the-future-and-the-struggle-between-central-controllers-and-freedom-lovers\/","title":{"rendered":"Musings on fate, the future, and the struggle between central controllers and freedom lovers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m reading — rereading, actually — the excellent book Isaac’s Storm<\/i><\/a>, about the Galveston hurricane of 1900.<\/p>\n

One hundred and fifteen years later this remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. By a long margin. The San Francisco earthquake? The Chicago fire? The Great Peshtigo fire<\/a>?* The Johnstown flood? The eruption of Mt. St. Helens? Hurricane Katrina? Forget them. All small potatoes when compared with what befell the people of Galveston.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And as you won’t be surprised to know, nature was only part of this “natural” disaster. Nature set the storm in motion and nature fed it. But human hubris was responsible for the colossal death toll. Some of the hubris was cultural and individual. Galveston was built on a sandspit in a can-do era by people who believed mankind was on the verge of overcoming every problem. Nature was to be conquered, not bowed to. The city was loaded with money (more millionaires than Newport, Rhode Island, some say) and the confidence to make more of it. The Isaac of the title was a conscientious scientist, assured he possessed all the world’s wisdom on hurricanes — and dead wrong.<\/p>\n

But — also unsurprisingly — part of the hubris was governmental (federal), and that part of the story could have been written today: a mania for centralized control; rigid bureaucratic procedures; the deadly combo of ignorance + authority; and turf wars so intense that, even as the storm barreled at the Texas coast, U.S. government weather bureaucrats were trying to suppress the alarming forecasts of “foreign” scientists who had more knowledge and experience of hurricanes then they. <\/p>\n

So Galveston was destroyed, and between 6,000 and 12,000 lives were crushed, by a “surprise” hurricane that could have been predicted days earlier. <\/p>\n

Need I add that afterward the Weather Bureau(crats) conducted a vigorous nationwide cover-up, lying as prolifically as a Clinton, claiming that their heroism, unfailing accuracy, and timely warnings saved thousands of lives?<\/p>\n

Yes, governmental to the core.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

These days, of course, meteorologists have vastly greater tools and instead of hiding facts to keep the public from being alarmed, they’re often the ones ringing the alarm (which has both positives and negatives, of course, but which has saved thousands of lives). <\/p>\n

But government is still government and you can observe the same Galveston-style bureaucratic behavior in every disastrous war, failed program, and systemic injustice.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Now here comes what looks like a change of subject. But it’s not. On “Marty McFly Day” (October 21), Spiked<\/i> editor Brendan O’Neill asked “When will we get back to the future?”<\/a> (H\/T PT)<\/p>\n

Please go read that if you haven’t already. I’ll wait.<\/p>\n

O’Neill expresses something I’ve felt — and maybe a lot of us have felt — but not really articulated. Even though we live in an era of technological wonders, it increasingly seems as though technology is used (and intended<\/i>) to serve the most petty wants and conveniences.<\/p>\n

Vast fortunes and entire technological empires are built on “inventions” that do nothing more than offer electronic versions of scrapbooks, personals ads, porn magazines, and kaffee-klatsch gossip sessions. O’Neill mourns the lack of vision driving all this. He and others have noted the extreme narcissim enabled by today’s tech (I mean, seriously, why would any adult human being — ever — want to publicly and routinely advertise what he just ate or she just bought?)<\/p>\n

Of course in one way O’Neill is wrong. The same gazillionaires who brought us gossip, shopping, and hook-up apps are investing their fortunes and their dreams in driverless cars, life extension, and spaceflight. So there’s vision aplenty, even as the average tech user can’t take his eyes off his iPhone.<\/p>\n

There will — I hope — always be visionaries. But I’m much, much more worried by something O’Neill doesn’t mention (something it seems doesn’t even get noticed by most people).<\/p>\n

I’m worried by how much tech — in virtually every field of endeavor — is turning us back toward the very sort of centralized control that’s brought catastrophe everywhere it’s been attempted, from Galveston to East Germany to the Department of Homeland Security. Tech that just a few short years ago was heralded as our liberation (and which has been in many ways) is going to put control of our lives right back into the hands of people like the weather bureau morons who were too busy with turf wars and secrecy to bother saving Galveston. People like the “security” morons who were too busy chasing misinformation or hidden agendas to prevent 9\/11 (and the morons who followed them<\/a>). People like the “emergency preparedness” morons who thought they were doing a heck of a job<\/a> by managing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina from Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

Those<\/i> people, and the deadly systems they inhabit, are having vast swaths of our lives handed to them. Right now.<\/p>\n

More on that next time.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

*BHM’s own John Silveira wrote the best-ever article on the strangely unknown Great Peshtigo fire. I would have preferred to link to that, but couldn’t find it online. If you spot an e-copy, please let me know.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m reading — rereading, actually — the excellent book Isaac’s Storm, about the Galveston hurricane of 1900. One hundred and fifteen years later this remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. By a long margin. The San Francisco earthquake? The Chicago fire? The Great Peshtigo fire?* The Johnstown flood? The eruption of Mt. St. Helens? Hurricane Katrina? Forget them. All small potatoes when compared with what befell the people of Galveston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,11,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-movies","category-computers-and-technology","category-government","category-privacy-and-self-ownership","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}