Thoughts from after the rains

With the weather here lately, my thoughts have lingered on the power of water, floods, and the terror they hold. Until now, floods of this magnitude were something that happened elsewhere. I mean, yeah, occasionally a river would overflow, back up, spill over, whatever you want to call it. But serious flooding had never crossed most people's minds. The weather of the past two weeks has shown just how damaging they can be in a modern society. Major cities struggling with containment, houses destroyed, lives lost and there was nothing that could be done to stop it.

New Orleans after Katrina was even worse. A major US city, one of the busiest port cities in the nation nearly wiped from the map. The aftermath was a fools errand, but the destructive capacity of water was shown in full force. Arguments have been made about global warming, how much of an impact mankind has on the weather, and what not. But those are topics for a later blog. This one has a slightly more positive slant.

In the aftermath of such flooding, it makes me wonder how mankind ever survived to begin with. And it fills me with pride in being human. Imagine the first settlements that later developed into cities that humans began to make. All around rivers with fertile flood plains. Those first real signs of mankind's potential in a zone that the dangers were known. The people who settled there knew that their lives depended on the river and its cycles. They lived every day knowing that the rivers should flow by normally, except at the times of year when it was supposed to flood. They charted, the observed, and they used logic to draw wonderfully skilled and accurate conclusions about their world that amaze even us.

That's one of the things that really pisses me off about people that try to say the pyramids and all the other great monuments of ancient history were built by aliens. The people that lived then were no dumber than we are today. They didn't have the technology that modern man has, but they had all the brain power to accomplish great feats. How does Stonehenge align so perfectly with the sky? Because the people who built it lives depended on knowledge of the world around them. They charted everything they could to make their lives easier, and those beautiful observations drove them to record it. And their religions gave rise to ceremonies around the symbols, trying to exercise some control over a world that they could observe and think about and draw conclusions over, but that their control was limited.

But that is another topic for another time. The fact that they understood the cycles came not from any mystic connection with Nature, but from the realization that their lives hung on a very thin balance. They could see the cycles, follow them, but at any point freak storms could send the river swelling, and those civilizations could have been wiped away. Mankind could have vanished in a torrent. It is no wonder that flood myths are so wide spread. They come from the knowledge that everything that made us who we are could be taken away for no reason at all, completely randomly.

It is a wonder that we have survived as long as we have. The fact that we did learn to control our envirornment so is a testimate to what people can do when we put our minds to things. When we dare to dream and take the risk to reach our full potential. That belief in mankind, in humanity, in a drive to do great things is what is lacking so often in the modern consciousness.

You know, I'm sure the ideas were much clearer in my head than my fingers have decided to put them out on here. If you think I'm a rambling fool, then leave a comment, if you think something else, also, feel free to comment.