When something goes wrong, we want to understand why. It’s not just that we want to understand the physical forces involved so that we can know what to do (or not do) next time. If we believe in a god, we also want to know how bad things can happen to decent people in a world run by a just deity. (Even if we don’t believe in a god, we need to find some way to live with peace of mind in a dangerous world.) In a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, Calvin is sadly pondering the death of an injured raccoon; why, he wonders do things have to die, particularly a harmless little raccoon? “It’s either mean or it’s arbitrary,” he concludes, “And either way I’ve got the heebie-jeebies.” That sums up pretty well the problems that people face when trying to explain how something terrible could happen, like the extensive destruction resulting from hurricane Katrina, in any kind of a just or fair world. The word “theodicy” describes the attempt to make some kind of sense out of situations like these.
This article from the New York Times gives a brief summary of theodicies past and describes a shift in our thinking from coming up with religious reasons to coming up with political/ideological reasons. It’s an interesting perspective on a lot of the discussion that’s going on now. I wonder if the shift is linked to the fact that we now have more knowledge about and control over our physical environment, and our expectations for somehow being kept safe are relatively high, especially in the US. Numerous people chose to ignore numerous clues that New Orleans was not safely situated. Although the hurricane was the kind of random event that gave Calvin the heebie-jeebies, you’ve got to wonder about the complex failure of human society to either prepare for or mitigate the effects of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans, given that we knew what was likely to happen if one ever did.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/books/08dest.html?pagewanted=all
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