Perspectives by Rev. Tom Schade

I was out walking the dogs this morning, through my neighborhood.  The prompt one was done;  she is more anxious and business-like. The other one is more laid-back and mellow. She likes to walk around and sniff stuff; she moves at a congressional pace, delaying meaningful action until the last possible minute.    

Nonetheless, two men are walking along the street toward us and I could hear their raised voices.  They are having what sounds like a good-natured argument.  As they pass, I hear the one say in exasperation.  "So, are we having a nuclear meltdown? No!  So, shut up and quit complaining!"

"Now, there's words to live by," I thought.  What a succinct summation of perspective.  Compared to a couple of nuclear energy plants slowly consuming themselves and releasing radioactive steam and water into the environment, most of our problems are actually quite small.

 A nuclear meltdown is a different sort of problem than most.  Many problems seem very difficult to solve but only because we don't like any of the obvious solutions. For example,  several different solutions to the problems of the national debt and deficit are at hand; it's just that nobody likes any of them.  Or to be more precise, some large group of people really hate each possible solution and so agreement is hard to reach.

The nuclear crisis in Japan is a much bigger problem.  No one seems to know what to do.  

 

The nuclear incident in Japan reminds me of the British Petroleum oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico not long ago.  No one actually knew how to stop such an oil spill.  As with nuclear energy, the human race had tapped into some primal forces of the earth and the resulting problem had gotten away from the people involved.  Anyone who has seen movies of the early oil wells erupting in gushers has some understanding of the tremendous pressure that holds oil within the earth.  It took a long time to bring Deepwater under control and a lot of environmental damage occurred in the meantime.

We can hope that similar human ingenuity will eventually solve the Japanese nuclear accident.  In the meantime, no one actually knows what to do, and the environmental damage mounts up.

"So are we having a nuclear meltdown,  No? So shut up and quit complaining !" 

It is a good idea to keep our local troubles in perspective.  But on the other hand, we ARE having a nuclear meltdown.  The entire human race, every one of us, is  having a nuclear meltdown.   Radiation in the air, in the ocean and ultimately in the soil and in the food supply will not distinguish between our arbitrary nationalities.  The radioactive particles created and freed by this reaction will become permanent parts of the Earth.  There will be another uninhabited dead zone in Japan, as there is in the Ukraine, but the radioactive particles and dust will travel the Earth forever.

Perhaps to really have perspective, we should not be shutting up, but complaining about bigger things.