THE CRISIS, MAN, AND DISASTER
ARE WE READY?
CRISIS is inseparable from man. we need to accept it, but man must know how to HANDLE it so that crisis may not turn into DISASTER. This is the essence of our learning. Every time I talk about problems and crises, my POINT IS, how will we turn it into an OPPORTUNITY in order that things will not be problematic but rather a relief from the crisis.
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING SCENARIOS!
Man lives on perilous earth. The dangers that beset him have many forms, some natural, some man-made. They range from the periodic to the persistent, from the microscopic to the cosmic. At one end of the scale the tiny microorganism, Pasteurella Pestis, the plague bacillus that in the pandemic known as the Black Death killed an estimated 43 million people in Europe and Asia between 1345 and 1353 (barely 7 years) when it petered out in the extremities of Europe – Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia. From 1918 to 1920, The Spanish Flu infected about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.
As of this writing, the world again was visited by a new pandemic, the COVID-19 virus that has already claimed more or less 3 million worldwide in just more than two (2) years and still counting. What a tragic event, A CRISIS that turned into a catastrophic event.
At the other end of the scale is the sun, whose ceaseless stream of radiation brought life into being on this planet, and in the form of heat and visible light, is now the basic fuel of all life forms. But the radiation that living organisms make use of occupies only a narrow band in the spectrum. Beyond the ultraviolet rays lie wide bands of x-rays and the deadly gamma rays that destroy the bands holding organic molecules together. If these lethal rays were not largely absorbed by the layer of ozone in the earth’s stratosphere, ALL BUT THE MOST PRIMITIVE FORMS OF LIFE ON EARTH WILL be DIMINISHED.
In many ways, man has made his environment much more hospitable over the past centuries, yet with all the armory of modern science at his command, he is still in danger from the same old enemies that have pursued him down the ages, earthquakes, fires, floods, volcanic eruptions, plagues and pestilence, assassination, crimes against humanity and terrorism not to mention greediness and incivility that cause further sufferings and crisis for fellow human, animals, and environment as well.
Try to look at this!
Many of the achievements of science and technology that are beneficial to man are really attempts to bring NATURE UNDER HIS CONTROL. Dikes are built to keep out of the sea, embankments are raised to limit the course of the river; marshes are drained to make good farmland.
Sooner or later, it seems the water sweep away the work of centuries like so many other flimsy barriers and wreaks their own retribution on those who put their trust in the work of their hands.
Because today the human population of the world is the largest in man’s history, people continue to use potentially dangerous places such as fertile mountain slopes and the low-lying land around rivers and sea coasts. There is a desperate need to feed the many hungry mouths around the world. The improved strains that have been developed have been found to draw more nutrients from the soil than before, exposing the land to erosion and turning it into the wilderness. The consequent replenishment of the soil with artificial fertilizer then alters the characteristics of the soil. Medicine, hygiene, industrialization, and city life are all departures from nature.
These departures and interferences have made man what he is today. His struggle to OVERCOME NATURE is, in a full sense, the HISTORY OF MAN ON EARTH. The early cultures that grew up beside the great river knew only too well the horrors of the flood – and in the case of Egypt, the calamity that would occur in the absence of the floodwaters that deposited the rich, fertile silt on the surrounding land. Deluge, earthquake, famine, and the other calamities of nature came to be understood as marks of disapproval or punishment meted out by their GODS. Man, being man, it was never difficult to select, after a destructive flood or earthquake, some offense or shortcoming that must have roused a particular god to anger.
When an earthquake opened a wide crack in the forum of ancient Rome, the priest declared that the gods would not close it until Rome’s most costly possession had been thrown into it. A youth named Marcus Curtius stepped forward and said that Rome’s true wealth was her brave men. Mounting his horse he jumped into the crack, which instantly closed. Even today, during the eruptions of Mount Etna and Vesuvius, priests carry the relics of the local saints in processions towards the volcano in the belief that this will bring the eruption to an end. Will somebody believe in this belief in today’s era? Of course NONE!
Then how about the war that is evolving? Though today’s cold war is very evident, whatever the reasons for the many wars of history: territorial expansion, trade, and commerce rivalry, the imposition of a belief or religion, persecution, political greed and corruption or self-aggrandizement, their aims are NEVER achieved without SUFFERING, ATROCITY and DEATH.
But over and above, the senseless violence of war, there is the cruelty that man inflicts on man, sometimes SO MONSTROUS that it leaves the mind numb with horror. Nor is man’s inhumanity to man something that stopped with the persecution of the Christians by the Roman emperors, or with the ending of the black slave trade. Our century has provided fresh evidence of man’s capacity for appalling cruelty to his fellow creatures – the hardly credible systematic slaughter of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and others undesirable by Nazis. And in the post-war years, the long catalog continues – most horribly in areas of Africa and South and Southeast Asia – it is a list that grows longer and each decade. Look at the sufferings of Rohingyans in Myanmar, the undetermined number of death of Uyghurs in China (immediately after the picture below), death of hundreds of thousands of Timorese, all in the hand of his fellowmen.
There are those who seek to achieve their political aims or ambitions by murdering their opponents. Indeed, an assassination of one’s opponents has long been accepted as a weapon of political warfare. From the stabbing to the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC to the shooting down of Martin Luther King and many more have often seemed, but rarely been, the simple answer to a complex political problem. In the event, most have provoked the very crisis that the murder was meant to prevent. Not a few actually become a turning point in the course of world history. Until a man has conquered the beast within himself there seems little he can do at present to prevent the systematic CRUELTY OF INDIVIDUALS OR EVEN STATES who are sponsoring cruelty to man.
He can, however, do much more to alleviate the suffering of those caught up in the wake of natural disasters. This is only if many people in the local governance know what to do and what they are doing.
The long-term prediction methods of such disasters and potential disasters as earthquakes, volcanic activity, typhoons, and cyclones that may produce storm surges, landslides, and flooding are being improved all the time. Medical science has made great strides in the battle against the diseases that bring so much misery and death to so many people throughout the world.
Pesticides and fertilizers increase crop yields to feed an ever-growing world population. But, here, too the very tools that science provides man with to improve the quality of his life can also be used as weapons against him. The use of broad-spectrum pesticides by which many different kinds of insects are killed is already causing grave concern among environmentalists. Not only the pest, but the pest predators are killed, or if not those who importantly need to pollinate the plants needed by man are eliminated. Besides the predator belongs to a more complex species, with a longer life cycle than the pest, it takes longer to adapt to the poison. In consequence, the pest, which develops a resistant strain far more quickly, makes a sweeping comeback, with neither predator nor poison to stop it. THIS EXACTLY happening, and does, happen with antibiotics as disease build-up resistant strains. But the inevitable problems are the pollution created by those chemicals we believe can help humanity.
In the mid-1960s, for instance, 68 people died, 330 were permanently disabled, and some 10,000 others were affected by mercury poisoning as a result of eating fish and other seafood caught in Minamata Bay in Japan. It was discovered that a chemical plant in Minamata City was discharging mercury-bearing waste in the bay.
Did you know that such is happening even before…1498 in Italy, Savonarola was burned at the stake for trying to bring about a spiritual and moral revival in Florence, and in which the ill-famed Machiavelli was made a secretary to the war committee of the same city (Below depicts Savonarola’s execution).
Savonarola, a Dominican Friar keeps on reminding the people about the wrath of God makes him an enemy to many politicians and religious people putting him to death. German artist Albrecht Dűrer drew one of his most celebrated engravings, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; these are the dreaded riders – “pestilence, war, famine, and death” – still ride through the lives of men as they have done since long before Saint John recorded his vision, which survives as the last book of the New Testament (and did you know that these four horsemen are believed to be just around us).
Modern medicine has been able to control the deadly outbreaks of diseases such as plague, cholera, and yellow fever, and the different forms of viruses through vaccines. But these SAME CONTROL SYSTEMS CAN SOMETIMES CAUSE BACTERIA to develop new and more VIRULENT STRAINS. Similarly, modern science now probably possesses to punch holes in the ozone layer surrounding the earth, our outer and most essential defense against solar death. The use of fossil fuels and industrial and agricultural revolutions create dynamics that negatively affect the earth’s biodiversity. Whether by accident or by chance, whether through knowledge or ignorance these are all active dangers and crises humanities of the new generation will be encountered sooner or later. DO THEY deserve to inherit this kind of legacy passed unto them by the recent generation, by us?
Today do people know, how is the disposal of the remnants of the vaccine after its use? This must be properly observed if not standardized by the government through the initiative of the local government and the health department. Because through ignorance or negligence this will create a new form of virus whose effects may be more disastrous than what the COVID-19 did to today’s humanity this is a CRISIS IN THE MAKING and we hope god forbid.
Remember this, man will never conquer DEATH and NO ONE CAN and may never fully conquer the other three (PESTILENCE, WAR, and FAMINE). The misery they bring can nevertheless be significantly reduced. TO DO THIS HOWEVER requires an understanding of these catastrophes and what causes them, both those that are called natural and others that originate within man, who is, after all, himself part of nature. (Caricature below show how man unceasingly exploit his environment without considering its consequence)
THE IMMEDIATE REACTION is to respond quickly (see the framework below) with relief and supplies and stop or if not minimize the sufferings of all biological beings. My framework below is a product of learning, observation, and practical experience on the ground. Whatever framework crisis managers are using will be effective as long as it fits the problem. For the reader and learner probably you’ve been a living witness to both failed and successful crisis management, or probably you were the one doing it.
One of the most important things in crisis management is the acceptance of failure, but how many times do you see crisis managers not only in this country but in other countries as well who never admit failures? This is a clear indicator of an inefficient and weak crisis manager. If you could not accept failure, you don’t have any room for improvement, and you never used the crisis as an opportunity for learning and you will not grow because of that. As you see in our framework a well ‘GROUNDED” approach is still best and its element is PROACTICITY. Traditionally, many leaders are caught by surprise and use only their instincts in responding to a problem, but such an approach may work some other times but will not work most of the time. Our qualities, your qualities can be a driving force for success if we know how to prepare in advance and that is explicitly described in the upper portion of the framework.
It is at this juncture, our interest being criminologists to look into the welfare of MAN AND BE OF SERVICE TO THEM. That MAN deserves to be treated more as a subject rather than an object. These are some of the forgotten aspects of MAN’S RESPONSE SYSTEM. I WOULD like to repeat my line of words and in fact, keep on repeating it every time we are in both formal and informal forums reminding criminologists of what they are as professionals dealing with people.
“A criminologist is a sociologist and must therefore be interested in human beings and their well-being. Human beings must not be, or become, objects to them. This is because the object of criminology, as it is with all of sociology, is to make the overall quality of life better for all. In contrary to the functions of the police, though they protect offenders due to them constitutionally, they were OBJECTS to the police that go against the true flow of criminology”
Finally, NATURES, merely and truly wait its time; for the right time and no one knows when and where it will come to us RECIPROCATING what we did to him. If we love our nature that will be reciprocated of course with love and abundance, IF WE NEVER CARE FOR OUR NATURE, of course, we need to be ready for an IMPENDING CRISES, because if we don’t we are doomed to face DISASTER!
We just comprehended the complex scenarios and situations of what are crises and possible disasters to humanity. Just like my question above, “ARE WE READY?”
CONSIDERING CRISES INTERVENTION SKILLS
COMPETENCE RELEVANT TO BELIEF: Cultural, Ethnic, and Religious Background
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- Cultural Sensitivity
- Cultural Competence
- Cultural Proficiency
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For the crisis counselor, the first step toward cultural competence and hopefully toward cultural proficiency is not to assume that everyone views things from their own values or belief systems. When one does this, it reflects ethnocentrism, which is the cultural equivalent of egocentrism, only here, the belief is that all cultures function in the same way that one’s own culture does. Therefore, when in doubt about particular customs, rituals, values, or belief systems it is better to ask rather than to assume.
COMPETENCE RELEVANT TO SKILLS: Training, Ingenuity, and Clear-headedness
- Response to Crisis: Absorption of Trauma
- Physical Response: Coping Mechanism
- Emotional Response: Emotional Containment
- Cognitive Response: Sensory and Memory Recognition
Crisis intervention is not about “rescue.” More often than not, rescuing benefits the rescuer more than the victim; rescuers make the mistake of maintaining control over the victim when control should be placed in the hands of the individual in crisis. Crisis intervention is about the foundation of the Chinese symbol for a crisis: danger and opportunity.
Understanding the notion of opportunity in crisis is critical to effective crisis intervention. The crisis event drives the individual to seek help, just as hunger drives the search for food, thirst for water, and loneliness for greater connectedness with others. The search for help presents an opportunity to acquire more effective problem-solving skills, greater self-awareness and fulfillment, and more positive feelings of competence and self-efficacy. Effective crisis intervention should empower the individual to rise from the devastation and resume control of daily life with a regained sense of hopefulness. In order to be effective, therefore, crisis intervention must be both empowerment-focused and flexible.
WITH YOUR INDULGENCE, AS AN EXPERT AND MAN ON THE GROUND, TAKE THAT TALENT, USE IT AND ENSURE THAT MANKIND IS BEING SAVED AND SECURED WHENEVER A CRISIS OCCURS.
Having said that, may we then ask and solicit you to answer the following question:
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- What are the important qualities a present-day crisis manager has based on the probability of crisis he may encounter?
- Looking at the past event involving a crisis that turns into a disaster, what common failure have you observed in a government crisis manager?
- Recommend measures (as many as you can) to strengthen your observation.
- In contrast with question number 2, how will you consider yourself a competent crisis manager reflecting on the above scenarios and situations in this presentation?
Send your answer to wrberalde@yahoo.com or you can simply place it in the comment section so others can read it.
GOOD LUCK AND THANK YOU! wrberalde