Constructive or Destructive?

Well by now the media has inundated us with coverage of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast, most particularly New Orleans. I certainly don't mean to minimize the significance of it as this has been a horrible tragedy for so many. I want to focus on one aspect of it, however.

It seems much of the coverage has focused on fingers pointed left, right, up and down (and often the middle finger is the one doing the pointing) about who is to blame for this, that and whatever else is there to have blame assigned to it.

But how much of this is constructive? I think we would all agree the response to the disaster was lacking in efficiency and could have been handled much better. But what is the motive behind all of the blaming that is taking place right now? To improve things for the future so this doesn't happen again? To shift the heat away from oneself? To increase media viewership and readership? To make someone else look bad, or look worse than yourself? Probably all of the above.

I just hope we learn from this and move forward, rather than mire ourselves in trying to squash people into the ground. It is painfully obvious that an extreme lack of coordination and organization existed, enough to strike glee in the hearts of America's enemies -most notably the terrorists. Sure this was chaos of an unusually large nature and I doubt no matter how organized we were that we could have effectively handled this. It did point out, however, that there was room for improvement and even had this been on a much smaller scale there were still a bunch of headless chickens running around.

9-11 had its commission to investigate the handling of the situation. One will surely be formed for Katrina, also. But will we learn from this or will their report be an enormous use of tax dollars with the result being a thick volume that winds up sitting on the $3.00-and-under table at the publisher closeout outlets?

Before we cast stones at those who responded, let's take a look at our own selves. How many of us are prepared for a disaster in our own homes? We look at the people living below sea level in New Orleans and wonder why they want to stay there, given the regularity with which devasting storms strike them. Are they stupid or what?? Yet living in Southern California I am sure others around the country wonder the same thing about us - why risk another earthquake, especially when you know it is going to happen again. If the big one struck tomorrow would we be ready? We're constantly told to expect it, yet how many of us really do expect it to happen to us?

Then take a look at the businesses around you. At your own workplace, for example. Not just in terms of if a disaster should strike, but in day to day operations would you say that your management has it all together? Or is the Peter Principle glaringly exemplified in your organization? I often wonder just how we manage to get by in this country when I hear about all the waste and stupidity that takes place around us.

It's not just confined to the U.S., either. Take Russia for example; they've had their share of disasters and they don't seem to be the coldly efficient Russkies that I grew up fearing when the Red Scare was still part of our culture (admittedly I wasn't around during the height of this but I was a youngster in the days of JFK and Kruschev and believe me, those were not comfortable times what with having our weekly air raid siren testing and random drop drills). We're all human and we all share a basic human nature. Those whining people who love coming out of the woodwork to take any opportunity they can to criticize the U.S. need to realize it's everywhere in this planet, not just here. Critics have pointed out that though we possess all this great technology which supposedly makes us better than those less "advanced" than us, we were embarrassingly inept at responding to Katrina. Understand, however, that technology is only as good as the people who run it and when it comes down to it, we're all human.

But that is also a good thing. As humans, we are capable of learning and bettering ourselves though often I think that goes against our basic natures. Still, we need to rise above this and focus on being constructive. All of this finger pointing does no good unless we are able to make improvements so that next time we do better. Not just for major disasters like this but in all things that surround us every day, remember that opportunities abound to fix things before they break.