Japanese names of destruction

This article appears in today's INM regional Irish newspapers

By Michael Commane
The place names Sendai, Fukushima Minamisanriku and Ras Lanuf are all new to me. I never heard of them before, I knew nothing about those places or what went on there. And now, I have a little idea of the horror and pain that the people in these towns and cities are experiencing.

Fukushima and Minamisanriku have been devastated by the tsunami that has hit Japan and Ras Lanuf is a town in Libya where fierce fighting has taken place between Gaddafi’s army and those opposed to him.

In our school staff room on Friday I noticed a young trainee teacher watch online the breaking news about the Japanese earthquake. It looked as if she was close to tears as the horror of what was happening began to unfold.

And then when I came home from school and turned on the television I too found myself greatly upset with what was happening. Certainly the television cameras and all the other modern technology brought the horror of what was unfolding directly into our homes.

In this column last week I wrote about the wonders of modern technology and how ‘scary’ a modern smart phone is.

With all our technology at our fingertips when nature decides to unleash its might on us we are left helpless, hopeless and incredibly vulnerable.

Watching the power of that water last Friday roll over buildings, cars, everything in front of it, forced me to stand in front of the television mesmerised beyond belief.

And just as I write this, reports are coming in that a town has disappeared. Trains are missing. A nuclear power station has gone on fire. They are talking about meltdowns at nuclear stations.

And in Libya we see scenes of people shooting and killing one another. This time the pain and devastation is manmade, but also savage and cruel, leaving people dead and maimed. Lives destroyed forever.

Things are bad in Ireland. People are worried and nervous what lies ahead as our economy collapses and we owe sums of money beyond our understanding.

But in the scale of things this is no Ras Lanuf, Sendai or Minamisanriku.

That savage water that inundated Japan on Friday swept away everything in its way. It had not mercy and showed no mercy. It wreaked extraordinary damage and that in a country that was so prepared for such an event.

Something on that scale forces us to realise how fragile and vulnerable we all are. Those waters were completely indiscriminate. They took no account whether one was young or old, rich or poor. They just crushed on, relentlessly.

Seismologists, geographers and meteorologists know why these things happen and we all say we know the power of nature but watching it on television gives it a whole new reality. What must it have been like to have been engulfed in it, in those milliseconds before it crashed in on top of people and destroyed their lives forever?

In so many ways it is an imponderable how the world, life, society does not implode on itself. And yet it all keeps going and we manage. Even in the most horrific of circumstances we get up again, dust ourselves down and get back to business.

It would be an unwise person who would say anything other than we are all amazingly fragile. We might go about our business oblivious to what might happen, but we all know that just around the corner anything is possible.

Nature can throw what it wishes at us and it is only a fool who could think that he or she is impervious to the might and force of nature.

In a short period of time we have seen terrible floods in Pakistan, the 2004 tsunami, the earthquake in Haiti and now this catastrophe in Japan.

No matter how often nature shows its all-powerful card we are easily lulled into some sort of lethargy or laziness that helps us forget how we can be thrown about and devastated by mother nature.

Is there some sort of parallel about how we use and speak about the notion of God?

Maybe there is no God and the world is just what we see, experience and live.

On the other hand, just because we don’t see or understand God, is that good enough reason to say there is no God?

We might well make a cliché of God but just because we might think we manage without God, is really no reason or cause to dismiss the idea out of hand.

Just as the power of nature is ultimately unknown and surprising, in a similar way the reality and presence of God is mysterious and mystifying,

I’d be slow to get rid of God or dismiss the idea out of hand.

There are too many clues out there for me to be able to deny the existence of God.

I’m inclined to say I’m far too fragile and vulnerable to dare say there is no God.

Television networks are saying it will cost in the region of €80 billion to clean up after the tsunami in Japan. And that’s less than we have borrowed.

Nevertheless, next time we have a cold spell or severe rains and winds we should go easy on hyperbole.

I’ll leave it at that.