Man vs. Mother Nature

We humans are a funny lot. We are so ego-centric that we can hardly see past our own sense of self worth and accomplishments. Looking at what we have done over the last few thousand years or so and you can see why this might be the case. Pyramids of various designs. A giant wall. Large buildings and hydro electric dams. Automobiles and airplanes. Wireless communications and the internet. Space travel and the moon landings. Man has done all of these things in a relatively short amount of time. We've only had the ability to fly for 107 years. That's not really very long. How many thousands of years did it take for Mother Nature to carve out the Grand Canyon? So yes, I guess it might be understandable for mankind to become a victim of believing in it's own success. But then every so often Mother Nature gives us a smack upside the head.

Mankind has always had the 'lets conquer nature because we can' kind of attitude. We try to tame rivers for power. We overcome the fact that we can't fly naturally and build machines to help us do that. In case you might not have noticed, there is no life in space because there is no air there. But we humans don't avoid space. No. We build space craft to enable us to leave the one place that has an environment that allows us to live in order to travel somewhere that doesn't. We humans are never content. We believe that the world is our oyster and that the grass is always greener somewhere else. Then something happens that shows us how the deck is really stacked. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, snow storms and flooding all show us that our accomplishments are really just passing fads.

Take the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland. Nothing like some dust spewing from a volcano to make things come to a screeching stop. For the past five days the air space over eastern Europe has been closed to air traffic. People are sleeping in airports and paying outrageous amounts of money for a tiny piece of floor space in hotel rooms because their flights have been cancelled due to what amounts to Mother Nature farting. Because really in the most basic sense that is what a volcanic eruption is—the planet passing gas. If Mother Nature can cause this amount of chaos with a fart, lets hope that she never gets tired of us living here or we're in deep trouble.