Sunny Days in Heaven
Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven


Friday, September 02, 2005  

Initiative

One of the things I have wondered about is why so many healthy people have sat on their butts for three or four days in New Orleans waiting to be rescued. I figured that they were surrounded by water and couldn't get out.

But there are a few highways there that are perfectly fine and dry, and someone who is hungry and thirsty can walk out of the city and go someplace dry and make some sort of appeal to an undamaged community for some temporary help.

But you have a class of people for whom personal initiative (apart from looting, getting drugs, and committing crimes) is extinct.

If you could have walked out of New Orleans, would you have stayed with the mob? There are certainly a large number of decent people there in the crowds, but the whole class of people have been ruined by their sense that government has to take care of them no matter what. Disaster comes and government can't take care of them (for whatever reasons) and they fall apart like little children incapable of rational or co-operative action.

People would rather sit in their filth and wait to be served rather than start walking and seeking help down the road.

I'm not talking about people who are incapable, who are sick, infirm, or aged, but think about how much easier it would be to treat those people if the healthy ones had started hiking to Texas or Baton Rouge.

here's a good satellite picture via JunkYardBlog.

Update

Of course, if they walked maybe this would have happened as it did to tourists in NO.


They trudged for blocks to walk over a bridge, but officers wouldn't let them cross — and fired a few warning shots over their heads to convince them.



Incredible.

posted by Mark Butterworth | 9:39 AM |

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