Beautifully Destructive

Nature… beautiful but destructive. Natural disasters have plagued humans as long as civilization has been around; from the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates to Hurricane Katrina and to the recent earthquake in Haiti. But are natural disasters… really disasters? From the perspective of the human race, yes they are disasters. They kill people, devour cities, and diminish people’s livelihoods to ruins.

I beg to differ with this way of thinking though. I think it’s important when nature is concerned to look at it on a grander scale. The earth has been here long before us and may (unless we continue on the path we are on) be here long after us. It is constantly changing and evolving. Islands are formed and destroyed, continents are shifted into new ones, plant life evolves and changes. The old gives way to the new.

As human’s we have a certain resistance to change. We want to have control over everything. We want to control the weather and even the Earth. But really, the Earth controls us. We are at it’s mercy. After all, we are just animals, even though we have the capacity of higher thinking. We have the same basic needs, the same drives: food, water, shelter, sleep, and procreation. As Darwin put it, “survival of the fittest.” This is the way nature works, and we can fight it all we want, put in the end we are still part of it.

So no, natural disasters are not disasters at all. They are normal reactions the every changing Earth has to the environment. Fires clear out the old plants and make it so new trees can grow, providing oxygen. Volcanoes create islands and give already existing lands a clean slate to rebuild. Earthquakes create new land forms and reshape the land. Tsunamis create new lakes and waterways. Hurricanes and floods provide rich soil deposits to the lands. In my opinion, the benefits outweigh the bad. Why try to ruin a system that has worked for billions of years?