Hurricane Sandy Reminds Me that I Enjoy a Good Natural Disaster, Because I’m a Terrible Human Being

Last updated on: October 30, 2012 at 8:19 am by Alan Noble

Hurricane Sandy Reminds Me that I Enjoy a Good Natural Disaster, Because I’m a Terrible Human Being 2012-10-30T08:19:09-06:00 Alan Noble

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Image Credit: The Birkes via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

When I was a kid I loved a good storm. I would gather every bucket I could find and place them around the back of our house to catch the rainwater pouring down eaves. While it rained I’d man the buckets, moving them to more efficient places, pouring smaller pails into bigger containers. I’d keep these buckets for weeks after the storm until the water turned brown from dirt and dead leaves and I would have to dump them out. Maybe I kept the water because we lived in a desert, or maybe because I wanted to keep something of the storm around after it had passed, because I hoped to capture a part of its grandeur.

Watching news coverage of storms, I would always hope for something really terrible to happen: mudslides, flash flooding, cars floating down the street, sink holes, people stranded on rooftops rescued by helicopter or boat. It’s not that I wanted people to die, I just wanted some truly incredible thing to happen, some tragedy that shook the foundations of civilization, even if it was only momentary. I felt about the same towards fires, earthquakes, mass shootings, riots, all those events that a healthy person laments and prays will never come.

Unfortunately, I’m ashamed to report, these feelings have not matured a whole lot in 20 years. I still get a thrill at the news of a great disaster and a part of me still hopes that it will be worse than expected, something wholly out of our control. The difference is that I’m old enough now to repress these feelings and ideas so that I don’t generally show my excitement when people’s lives are in danger, but it’s still there whether I admit it or not.

So, when images and reports of Hurricane Sandy hitting the East Coast start to come in on Twitter and Facebook, I felt that thrill again, particularly the images from New York City. Images of blackness where there should have been Union Square. Shots of streets flooding. Reports of the Statue of Liberty going dark. Hospitals losing backup power and having to evacuate. I’ll admit it. I didn’t read these reports and stare at these images because I had a sincere desire to pray for these poor people. I was interested because something fantastic was happening. I suspect I’m not the only one, either.

Image Credit: Glyn Lowe Photoworks via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

It’s never been easier to be in the midst of a natural disaster or tragedy from some safe distance. You can get instant images and reports from a multitude of sources in the middle of the event with little-to-no commentary or time to distance you from it thanks to social networks. This information might grant us the ability to care for, pray for, and provide for those in need more immediately and sympathetically, but it doesn’t, at least, not always. Instead, quite the opposite tends to happen: a natural disaster turns into yet another disembodied, raw factoid to be molded into endless iterations of memes and ironic statuses and thinly-veiled voyeurism. Obviously this isn’t always the case, but it is frequent enough to cause us to reflect on our reactions to Hurricane Sandy.

Consider, for example, how quickly fake images of the storm began to spread across the web. Or the fact that before the storm even hit, Twitter was flooded with ironic, humorous tweets about the storm–comments about how Romney would try to blame Obama for Sandy. Or how Obama would blame the storm on a YouTube video. Don’t get me wrong, these comments were funny. But they were also ridiculously callus to what was actually happening at that very moment to millions of people on the East Coast.

Image Credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

None of this is surprising to us, probably. By now we’re all pretty used to the ultra-inappropriate humor that defines the internet. And the media’s coverage of storms has been sensationalistic for decades, selling us natural disasters as reality TV for higher ratings. But being self-aware is our post modern condition. We get that we’re being hurtful and insensitive and voyeuristic when we trivialize an event like Sandy for retweets and Facebook Likes, but that’s kinda what makes it so funny. We know better, but we do it anyway. And perhaps something similar goes on when we get a voyeuristic thrill out of looking through images of tragedies–we know we shouldn’t use the pictures as an object for our pleasure, but we do it anyway. We are entertained by Hurricane Sandy.

Maybe we do it because we desperately want there to be something uncivilized, unaccounted for, uncontrolable in our world, something to remind us that our lives cannot be reduced to the ordered world of modernity. Or maybe we do it because our lives are oversaturated with tragedies from all over the world and our technology has invited us to objectify the suffering of others and to treat it as merely one more factoid for us to use.

In any case, my God, what a terrible human being I am.

Previous Post

October 30, 2012

Feminine Appeal: You Don't Have to Be a Sexy Crayon for Halloween

Next Post

October 30, 2012 Living in Community is Hard, Beautiful Work

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Asides Elsewhere Featured Film Games General Culture Headline Literature Music Of the Moment Podcast Politics RetroPost Sports Technology Television Uncategorized Viral

Select a Month February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz