Giant Laboratory

Giant Laboratory

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.......

With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee?

            A laboratory is an area used for experimentation, we usually think of a room, test tubes-microscopes-Bunsen burners-chemicals. Many laboratories are used for the study of reactions, animals, even children. This writer so remembers all those cages of experimental rats, UNC-CH medical school. There are only five degrees of separation between the homeostasis of rats and human beings. Surprisingly, humans and rats are actually more alike than they are different. For one thing, we’re both mammals and give birth to living young. We’re both warm blooded, and rats eat everything we do…  and live where we live. More importantly, rats and humans often suffer from the same diseases. That’s because humans and rats have the same basic physiology, similar organs, and similar body plans. We both control our body chemistry using similar hormones, we both have nervous systems that work in the same way, and we both react similarly to infection and injury.
            The giant super-storm-hurricane which devastated the north east corner of the United States, is being used as a large laboratory, seeing and studying how human beings react after a disaster. It is good to find out now, before the sleeper cells of terrorists already in the country start decimating the infrastructure and bring chaos to the population.
            America has been stupid enough to allow terrorists to infiltrate the country. They are here with their explosives-biologicals and God alone knows what else. As the Middle East conflict grows into world war III (Russia-Iran-Syria at war with Israel-USA-Saudi Arabia...Turkey), adding to the dilemma-disaster, the terrorist will do their thing, making the damages from the storm appear insignificant, many more deaths. At least people now, there and elsewhere, will know what they are facing when not preparing for the inevitable.
            When I was a child, a ravaging storm came through such as a coastal hurricane, there was little inconvenience. Electricity off, and it went off often, we had kerosene lamps ready for use, a wood burning cook stove for cooking in heat, hand pump in a well of fresh water. On the farm, we had the chicken house (fresh eggs, chickens), smoke house (cured meat), a pantry full of canned, preserved, dried, fruits and vegetables. Americans of the 17th, 18th and even 20th century were prepared for anything. Now, everyone having been driven to urban areas by an increasingly socialist government (it is easier to control people thickly settled, less independent). Spoiled, lazy, we expect the government to take care of us. The government takes care of itself, big brother has little empathy during a time of disaster. Our ancestors knew the compassion of neighbors-churches-civic clubs. Most of all, handed down to them by common sense ancestors, they prepared for "rainy days" ahead of time. Government, schools, churches, have failed miserably in preparing people for tough times.
            If the mind of man can create a marvelous piece of art, canvas, sculpture, even music, as we have seen in this age of technology, the mind can predict and produce survival methods. Why keep on stringing electric phone lines on poles where they are knocked down over and over? Insanity in everything is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Why continue to build on barrier islands where time and time again the buildings have been decimated by wind-rain-storm surge? Believe me, I know the cost involved in a beach house with a good view of the ocean. The greatest force known to man, wind behind water, as in a hurricane. My parents talked about hurricane Hazel (1954) their entire lives, until their deaths. There was little weather forecasting then. I was away in the military. Even 80 miles inland, the destruction was horrific, they did not know what was going on as this giant hurricane made a swath, almost as wide as Sandy, across North Carolina, leaving destruction behind.
            It is a new world now, news flashes constantly, sophisticated weather experts. Much more is known about construction, certainly preparation with food, and medicines, survival.
            We want integrity in a leader, foremost in integrity is honesty. It was a pitiful sight to see President Eisenhower apologize to the American people for lying about the shooting down of the U-2 spy plane by the Russians. Eisenhower had said that the spy plane was a lie, until the Russian's produced Gary Powers the pilot. The general President had to admit that he had lied to the people. And so it goes, you can not believe anything anymore from your leaders or your news media. In the new world order, the people are more enslaved than the Russian peasants ever were, pudent has more power than any Czar. The United States operates without representation of the people. The senate and the house of representatives have become debating groups. The President is supreme, along with his henchmen, those paid off to keep him in power-high living. 
            The political science of this presidential election has become a study in abnormal psychology. Two candidates for President, a Mormon and a black man, both soaked in past religious and racial discrimination...the Mormon's psyche raked by Mormon persecution, the black man's psyche, harassed by the bigotry toward mulatto and blacks. These two, like their generations, buffeted by ambition-desire for money and power, long ago forgot the idealism of America and the religious ideas on which the nation was founded. They use such terms as "God Bless" but evidently know little about God. We are seeing what money and power can do to a mere man.

            Not only in politics, every area of life. So often, this writer saw a man of real integrity, principles, ideals, even Christian morals, leave the evangelical church where he knew the mercy of Christ and go to a modernistic denomination where "cutting corners" was much more acceptable. After all, God is greatly impressed with people of power-money-influence. When will we learn that elected-chosen-predestined by God is infinitively more important than the elections of men.