The Widening Gyre

I've just read part of the following:

"Fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open, and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were shot at as flooded-out New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday. 'This is a desperate SOS,' the mayor said. Anger mounted across the ruined city, with thousands of storm victims increasingly hungry, desperate and tired of waiting for buses to take them out."

I guess I never realized how fragile a thing society really is. How much we take for granted every day. How quickly our baser human instincts might take over and all the limits of civility just fade away.

It's like the end of the world and I don't quite know what to say.

My father likes a quotation from Matthew Arnold that goes something like this: "Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends; Nature and man can never be fast friends."

Arnold is right. There is so much beyond our control that can make us stop dead in our hitherto steady tracks. Nature and man, despite their frequent interactions, are but the ficklest of friends.

But I think I'm beginning to realize that not even man's own nature can be friends with itself...at least not today.