Anyone who has ever built a sandcastle at the beach is familiar with the two main oceanic forces that work to bring about the castle’s destruction: the intermittent, forceful collisions of powerful waves and the incessant deterioration caused by erosion. While we might increase the height of the walls to combat the charging waves, accounting for the damages done by erosion is a much more difficult proposition.
Physically and geographically speaking, erosion is a global constant. Whether by wind, water or chemical, erosive forces are invariably and continually whittling away the landscape to form beaches, plains and riverbeds. The geologic equivalents to the powerful impacts of the waves, on the other hand, are relatively rare events of seismic change. Such events have the potential to simultaneously create and destroy – they might produce fault lines, form mountain ranges or catalyze tsunamis.
Our global society is characterized by forces and events that are analogous to the scientific erosion and collision dichotomy. In all arenas of life, we are confronted with both gradual change and instances of radical transformation. Due perhaps to human nature, or perhaps to the role of the mainstream media, it seems we are becoming increasingly hypocritical global citizens in terms of how we respond to these twin agents of change.
A particularly poignant example of this behavior involves the recent campaign to prosecute Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. After watching a half-hour YouTube video, we became humanitarians overnight in our crusade to “Stop Kony.” We became fanatical, resulting in an unprecedented outpouring of Internet support and cash donations from hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
Meanwhile, our country (among others) has a well-documented and shameful history of ignoring international genocides throughout history. How many readers are even aware that purges in Cambodia in the 1970s resulted in the deaths of over 1.7 million Cambodians? The lack of U.S. intervention in Rwanda in the early 1990s is similarly reprehensible. Like earthquakes and waves, YouTube videos shock us into action. Like slow erosion, quiet genocides go unnoticed.
Other global parallels abound, which further develop the metaphor. In Alabama, all hell broke loose when a crazed football fan poisoned 130-year-old live oaks at Toomer’s Corner. In the meantime, most of us remain blissfully ignorant of the irreversible damage we inflict on our environment on a daily basis. Up to 50 percent of our current biodiversity is expected to become extinct in the next 100 years due to habitat destruction, pollution and climate change – all of which are arguably driven by human actions. This widespread species loss has potentially catastrophic consequences for our environment and the ultimate fate of the human population. Here, too, the “waves” seem to have captured an inordinate proportion of our collective attention – while the ground beneath our feet rots away. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly sexy to discuss why mass extinctions are largely our fault. So we tune out.
A final example involves racism in the United States. Racial events work people into frenzies quite frequently around here: we consider the election of our first black president a momentous occasion, and we become bitterly divided when considering the questionable motives of George Zimmerman. Not as widely reported, however, are millions of instances of racial animosity that still pervade societies across the country to this day. “Subtle” issues like segregated greek life on college campuses and dangerously worded immigration statutes slip quietly into our subconscious. Compared with the raucous upheaval triggered by the election of a half-black president, these deceptively inconspicuous issues hardly rank as background noise. Again, it is apparent that as long as “waves” are crashing all around, it is exceedingly easy to become distracted from the steady deterioration occurring at the very heart of our castle.
In my opinion, it is not sustainable to continue this tradition of caring only when it’s popular to care. As global citizens, we can no longer afford to be apathetic stewards of our societies and our environment. The sudden and shocking waves of change might radically alter the way in which we see the world every now and then, but ultimately, it is the gentle currents of erosion that define life on this planet. While unusual and spectacular events might influence how we think, our everyday experiences shape who we are.
Any experienced sandcastle builder knows that under most circumstances, it is not the surging waves that scale the walls and then retreat that are most fearsome. Rather, it is the slow, unforgiving process of internal and external erosion that inevitably cause the walls to collapse under their own weight. As we stand on the shore during this high tide of human civilization, our castle made of sand is deteriorating with frightening rapidity. After all, there comes a time when you can no longer build the walls higher to keep the waves out. The only way to preserve what you’ve built is to reverse the tide.
Henry Downes is a columnist for The Crimson White and a sophomore majoring in economics.
