Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Sign of the Apocalypse #15: Looting in Louisiana

Yes, yes, I know, "the life of man" in the state of nature, a "warre of every man against every man," is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short". I've read my Hobbes.

But things are getting ugly in New Orleans, where looting is rampant in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. One observer even referred to the situation in The Big Easy as "downtown Baghdad".

Baghdad it's surely not, but the power of nature has released the more brutish side of human nature, the side that society tries to keep carefully suppressed beneath the veneer of civilization. It may be difficult for us to be confronted with our natural, all-too-human brutishness at a time of such devastation and suffering, but the truth, alas, is the truth, whether we like it or not.

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