Sin and tsunamis, Dave Belden

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

When tsunamis destroyed one of Europe’s greatest cities in 1755, there was as yet no science of seismology. Governments did not yet expect to take responsibility for the results of natural disasters or “acts of God”. People thought it was God’s punishment – though they differed on how people had sinned.

The Lisbon earthquake, 250 years ago, jump-started modern responses to natural catastrophes from science, philosophy and the state.

That this is no consolation to the dead of the recent tsunami shows how far we still have to go. But at least we know how to get there better than John Wesley, founder of Methodism, who ascribed Lisbon’s destruction to sin.

As Caspar Henderson writes in his illuminating review of earthquakes, in 1755 Lisbon was the capital of the Portuguese empire and Europe’s fourth largest city. The quake, 200 miles offshore, was followed by three tsunamis, and then fire. 85% of Lisbon's buildings were destroyed, including its famous palaces, libraries and churches. Maybe 100,000 died in Lisbon and elsewhere. Horrifying accounts of the calamity were read widely.

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Voltaire, a leader of the Enlightenment, questioned whether sin brought Lisbon’s downfall: “Was she more vicious than London, than Paris, plunged in pleasures? Lisbon is shattered, and Paris dances.” Voltaire was disgusted that after the quake the Portuguese authorities scapegoated individuals in an auto da fe – a religious lynching.

Voltaire used the occasion to critique a dominant myth of his day, the religious optimism which saw the world as essentially benevolent. In his poem on the destruction of Lisbon he asked: “But how conceive a God supremely good, / Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves, / Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?”

Rousseau, a leading thinker of the next generation, responded that people were partly to blame: they built their houses too high in an area prone to earthquakes, and instead of fleeing to higher ground they tried to save their possessions, and were swept away. This has been called the first social science response to a natural disaster, though to me it just sounds like using the common sense people already applied in other situations like river flood zones. But such sound sense has done little yet to stop us developing huge cities in quake zones – Tehran, Jakarta, Mexico City, Los Angeles…

Are we humans capable of the necessary foresight, when there may be lifetimes between major quakes?

Even before philosophers and scientists asked questions, the Portuguese prime minister, the Marquis of Pombal, acted strongly. “He was not paralysed with shock and is reported to have answered: ‘Now? We bury the dead and take care of the living.’ His quick response put fire-fighters in the city to extinguish the flames, and sent in teams to remove the thousands of corpses, quelling fears that corpses would lead to an epidemic.”

The departures made by Voltaire, Rousseau and Pombal from the conventional wisdom of their day still apply: we need better science, a rationalistic worldview, and efficient, technocratic government.

Which other myths of today are contradicted by today’s disaster?

The first is the free-market, small-government myth: the idea that markets can solve our problems. Governments are crucial to disaster relief, but even more to disaster prevention. If we humans get around to long-term prevention, it will be through the agencies of research, education, planning, resettlement, public information systems, law, and international agreements – all of which need activist government. It is through democratic government, as much as through free media, NGOs and unions, that citizens’ rights and welfare are protected.

What a chance for the United States government, the world’s most powerful and wealthy, to play a different role in a largely Muslim country (Indonesia) than it is playing in Iraq. But can George W Bush see that?

The second myth is that of many anti-globalisers, that modern capitalism is simply destructive. Caspar Henderson makes excellent points that development has destroyed coral reefs and natural barriers to tsunamis. But there’s another side to the story.

Los Angeles is a city of rich and poor, archetypal of the America that progressives rightly decry for its inequalities. It was built on earthquake faults, and it is estimated that a 7.5 earthquake might kill 50,000 people – a disproportionate number of whom will be poor.

But if a 7.5 quake hit Tehran, which sits on similar faults, it is estimated that over a million would die. LA’s poor live in better-constructed homes that Tehran’s middle class.

So economic development is well worth it for the poor, even if it comes with massive inequality.

Economic development throughout the Indian Ocean – especially when accompanied by the protections for citizens (and coral reefs) that progressives fight for – will one day mean societies at least as well prepared for tsunamis as today’s Japan. It is possible.

The huge relief effort now underway would have staggered Voltaire’s contemporaries. But we need an even bigger effort at prevention – which means much more serious attention by rich nations to assisting poorer ones.

Failure of the modern way will breed religious extremism.

For many survivors the relief effort will mean life instead of death. But to rebuild when you have lost everything – spouse, children, home, work – needs even more than the kindness of strangers. It needs an almost irrational faith, or a faith that includes and goes beyond reason. This too is a human attribute – people will find it in diverse ways, religious and secular. Will the religious extremists be the most successful ones to preach faith? What functional equivalents are the modernizers able to offer?

Religion is not going away any time soon. Some of it helps the modernisation process, some hinders. The best news I have heard was Antara Dev Sen’s story of the Muslims of Cuddalore helping the Hindus and Christians. Nonbelievers need community and inspiration too. The notion that religion is inevitably anti-modern is a third modern myth that should be demolished, but that’s for other columns.

If future natural forces on this scale cause as much destruction as this, it will indeed be because we have sinned: by not pursuing democratic government, economic development and personal inspiration as intelligently and boldly as we might. Voltaire was right in Candide: this is not the best of all possible worlds. But it isn’t the worst either. There is actually more reason to hope now than there was in 1755.

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Sin and tsunamis, Dave Belden