Humanity – must try harder, says God
Having grown up in Easter Ross, a place deep in the lore of the Brahan Seer, the gift of foretelling was a definite fact to me as a child. But when David Icke predicted that in 1991 my neighbouring island of Arran would be destroyed and sunk by an earthquake, in the absence of Charlie Brooker I had to debunk myself. The humanitarian disaster in Haiti (part of Hispaniola, not an island known for earthquakes, but one that knows plenty about colonialism), is an only too-real indicator that nobody – even Sportsreporter Incarnate – can definitively say what will happen.
Now the recriminations – Haitians made a pact with the devil so that he’d help them get rid of the French… the French accuse the Americans of taking advantage of the situation and making a move on the island… Haitian leaders are corrupt and that’s why the buildings are so shoddy… the Aid Agencies, selfishly jostling for position in the aid money-fest… (For a different take on what’s happening in Haiti, visit the Tanzanian/Scottish photographer Pradip Malde who has a strong connection with the island).
This re-run of Who’s Faultline Is It Anyway, broadcast whilst the bodies bloat and common looters get murdered in the streets by their own police force, make Icke and his highly confused form of truth about several political situations we all understand only too well, seem quite cuddly. And so those who will make political capital from the disaster should remember there but by the grace of…
Richard Dawkins is at the opposite end of the P T Barnum / Cassandra Scale from Icke. Yet both seem to share common themes (worryingly their web sites also seem to share the same crusading I’m Right, So Buy All My Stuff! look and tone). One of those themes is about either denying something exists (God; Dawkins) or insisting that something does exist (er, lizards; you know who). Delusional? I’ve got an App for that (app now removed from iTunes)
The answer is of course nobody, even the Pope on a good day, is right and nobody can know the seemingly infinite width height and breadth of life, the universe and all that – only Beeblebrox has survived the Total Perspective Vortex. And just because you live and work in a building designed by, for instance, Zaha Hadid (just to get the world/building analogy right – we wouldn’t want to suggest that God does 50s brutalism), shouldn’t mean she’s there permanently, concierge-style, answering all our dumb questions about what to do about today’s problems and accepting the blame when it all gets a bit too much. That’s Jesus’s job.
OK hats off to all the aid workers in Haiti, and the Haitians who are doing the best they can to survive the disaster.
