BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol II, No. 01
Jan 05, 2005

 
 
 social criticism by
 Vicente Soria de Veyra

ARCHIVE #001

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Archive:
2004
2005



Literary website:
Warphoto
 

On Social Criticism's
Kicking Up A Wave

AFTER the New Year festivities, silence, quiet. I remain in the calm of a Visayan city to continue my sabbatical of sorts, my wife (with our two kids) flying off to Manila to resume her work with a multinational trade publishing company.

Meanwhile, Aceh province (Indonesia), Sri Lanka, Maldives, Phuket and Phi Phi (Thailand), Chennai (India), Nicobar and Andaman Islands, and a part of Somalia, not to mention such countries as Sweden and Australia that saw many of their tourist citizens perish in the Asian tsunami, cancelled New Year celebrations to make way for the wailing of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, relatives, and friends. The object of the wailing and crying were the 155,000 -- and growing -- number of confirmed- and believed-dead, and the still unaccounted-for number of missing local citizens and tourists. The wailing, weeping, and worrying continues as we speak.

Now, here’s a contending super-tsunami worry from the other side of the globe. A few nights ago, the National Geographic Channel re-featured a program focusing on a truly larger worry upon a phenomenon in a volcanic island in the Canaries (a Spanish territory off the southern coast of Morocco). It seems that geologists have uncovered a gigantic crack in the island. The geologists dug a tunnel beneath the crack that led the NGC camera to view tiny riverines on the tunnel's floor and water dropping off the tunnel’s ceiling. The underground water would percolate during a volcanic activity; simply put, another volcanic eruption here could chip off a huge chunk of the island, allowing this chunk to fall into the Atlantic Ocean floor. After showing on camera proofs of the existing huge crack that stretches for miles/kilometers, the ocean-side part of it receding downwards by a foot each year, the program ended with the note that the split could occur next year, next decade, next century, or the next millennia. “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when,” said the host.

It’s not the island per se that the geologists are worried about, it’s the projected tsunami size that the split could generate that are holding them in awe and their words and imaginations warning-heavy. Computer analysis and simulations project a tsunami from this occurrence that an ocean vessel in the middle of the Atlantic might experience as no more than a weird and harmless water bump, but which all of the souls of Florida and many other souls from the US East coast will remember in heaven as the 600-foot water monster that rose near their coastlines, obliterating existences from Miami to New York and even inwards towards Atlanta, its biggest achievement perhaps the wiping off of all the structures and vegetation in the Disney World state. No candidate would want to aspire for a seat in the White House during these hours/days/months that will have nature turning the US East coast into a sort of beach desert. The catastrophe product will definitely threaten the United States’ stature as the leading superpower nation on Earth. And with most of the world running US dollar-based economies, the skyscraping-tsunami could ram the globe into a depression that might in turn churn out chaos in the affected nations. Anti-US leaders could also exploit the situation by as far as their imaginations could carry them.

But remember that this is not a scenario concocted by screenwriters but by geologists whose worry derive from seeing what could be likened to an egg on top of an unopened Coke bottle in the sand. A rare strong beach wind could tip the egg off the bottle and we know what will happen: egg yolk on the sand.

SOME will take this essay at face value: a geological though time-uncertain warning. But I doubt the US government is largely unaware of the Canary Islands threat. Does the governor of Florida keep his money in a Bahamas bank? If he does, then he probably doubts the geologists of the Canaries in the same way that his brother doubted FBI intelligence reports before 9/11 (unless GW Bush, along with his bin Laden corporate associates, was part of the plan to plane-bomb the WTC to churn out profits for his Bradley tank-manufacturing Carlyle Group, in which case he couldn’t be said to have been doubting the FBI reports but simply ignoring them).

Then some will read this essay as an attempt to depopulate Florida and the Bahamas and even New York, even as these places have nothing to do with me. Or a sort of economic sabotage, as if the NGC geologists were sent to the Canaries (and me asked to write this) by bin Laden terrorist funds. If the bin Ladens had sent the geologists to ruin the US East coast economy, then the Bushes (who are close friends of the bin Laden family) might have known about it already and might in their turn exploit it for, say, profits from the acquisition of Florida’s real estate developments. Maybe, I don’t know. But I believe the geologists were there from purely scientific interests.

Now, bear in mind that I am writing this in a social criticism column. One might suppose that I should be doing my job here best with a focus on the corruption in Indonesia that is slowing down relief efforts for Aceh. Or on Thai elements who may have been earlier ostracized for proposing, before the tsunami event this year, the building of tsunami warning systems. Or on the slow and belated help from the First World, the United States in particular, in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami disaster. One might aver that my job should obligate me to castigate the US’ wont to help only nations that it can derive trade or political headways in and ignore nations that other economic powers have better established their headways in already (like economic power Japan in the tsunami-affected areas). Such a demand on my writing thrust probably believes that the recent US calculated offer of help for the tsunami victims exposed a habit of asking for guarantees first towards its trade and/or political interests before delivering help; this demand’s belief would therefore oblige me to comment on rather than ignore this gross sin.

And this belief is probably true. It’s probably the primary reason why Japan would want to be the number one donor to the tsunami-affected regions, only followed by the belief that helping tsunami victims elsewhere would be reciprocated by the present beneficiary nations when it becomes Japan's turn to seek help. Trade and political interests are probably also the reason why the US would help the Moslems of Croatia while ignoring the Moslems of the West Bank. It’s probably the reason why calls for aid in recently drought-stricken Sudan was largely ignored by the US until US Democrats started clamoring for Bush's notice of what was happening in the dried bushes of Africa. It’s probably the reason why Bush’s Carlyle Group’s Bradleys would rather run after terrorists in the plains of Iraq than in the tank-unfriendly mountains of Afghanistan.

BUT what I should write on is my business. And I believe social criticism must also know when to stop and take notice of bigger things, things that might demand in the unfaithful a sort of "God criticism".

But, on the other hand, social criticism may actually be like polluted oxygen on earth. Wherever societies are involved, whether before or after a natural catastrophe, social criticism is always there to pick snot from its ivory-towered nose. For instance, the victims of the recent flooding of Bicol, Central Luzon, and Aurora province, in the Philippines, found themselves criticizing the kind of logging-corrupted leaderships they have had. Government officials like Dick Gordon, meanwhile, virtually rightfully criticized in turn the public’s own cowardice towards illegal loggers that allowed these (the logging and the flooding) to happen in the first place. Preachers have also been wont to display their abundance of criticism towards those who refuse to have “faith in the Lord” and in the authority of churches qua Noah’s arks, blaming them for the new Floods happening around the world.

But let's go back to the Canary-to-Florida skyscraping tsunami possibility.

Try to imagine what social critics might say about the threat. Religious or leftist social criticism, for example, will probably focus on the political and corporate pride of Washington and New York, the cultural snobbishness of Boston, or the Batista regime-like crimes and perceived hedonism of Miami, characteristics that might now start to find Christian or socialist humility vis a vis the threat. Or social criticism might solicit conspiracy theories to fit political theses (e.g. the Canaries report as a Bush-hatched lie). Social criticism might also wax para- or meta-historical, recalling Pompeii or the Egyptian and Spartan and Trojan and Roman empires’ respective fall. Or, finally, social criticism may simply suggest constructive suggestions for addressing the threat (evacuation of the region this early?). This, outside of what scientists and engineers may do to avoid the human catastrophe if possible: instant evacuation transport modes for millions of people? invisible metropolis-sized dome shields that will repel the water?

But what about social criticism after the fact of this tsunami, touted as the biggest potential catastrophe in the history of mankind? Will there be more of the same blaming by the righteous, more of the same corruptions, more of the same selfishness in nations that one can write about? Will Asia’s critics be quick about their poor governments’ slow and delayed offer of help to their rich planetary brothers and sisters in the US East Coast? Or will essays simply congratulate the US for a water system that may have been put up for this expected occurrence, or easily celebrate the American spirit that rises from the ruins, all the while criticizing a poverty of such spirit in a non-US locale?

Or will social and political criticism -- facing the photos of eradicated communities and states -- cleanly fade away? Will it, in all humility, yield to perhaps more appropriate columns on philosophy, religion, history, engineering ideas, medicine, good government, and global harmony? Will it? Will it?!

Or will it – like the polluted oxygen on earth -- continue to pick the righteous booger from its ivory-towered, though devastated, nose?

After the age of this Big Splash, should it happen in the days of humanity, there must be silence, quiet. The unaffected must remain tranquil in their remote cities and continue their sabbatical of sorts, their loved ones driving or flying off to wherever it is they work or spend hobby time in. But it must be a different kind of peace, for it shall be one that carries the knowledge of cancelled noises in cities and family homes in the US that have yielded to the millions of fathers’, mothers’, sons’, daughters’, brothers’, sisters’, relatives’, and friends’ endless wailings.

And snot-picking will be replaced by a philosophy. 

# # #

Posted 01/05/05. Send comments to: bananacue_republic@yahoo.com

"Computer analysis and simulations project a tsunami from this occurrence that an ocean vessel in the middle of the Atlantic might experience as no more than a weird and harmless water bump, but which all of the souls of Florida and many other souls from the US East coast will remember in heaven as the 600-foot water monster that rose near their coastlines, obliterating existences from Miami to New York and even inwards towards Atlanta, its biggest achievement perhaps the wiping off of all the structures and vegetation in the Disney World state."