Sunday readings

I devote a substantial portion of my Sundays to read Colombian press: I read the opinion section of the two major newspapers and of the only weekly journal that still exists and is serious. I like to think that I am better informed than most Colombians, but it would be a bit pretentious to claim something like that. Today, two of my favorite columnists dedicated their space to comment on the ash cloud caused by the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier. The pieces are available here and here; if you read Spanish please take a look, as they are wonderfully written.

The spirit of both pieces is the same: the apocalyptic effects that recent natural disasters are having in the world. Of course, in addition to the glacier thing this week, one remembers the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and China. One of the columnists even argues that the combination of an earthquake with the disruption in air transport in Europe would be enough to cause great chaos---the kind of chaos one would expect from the "end of the world". Despite the ash cloud, one of them remarks, the sky in Europe is as blue and wonderful as in the most amazing spring.

Leaving aside the necessary reflections on modern globalization that the ash cloud thing leaves us (one example being the huge losses in Kenia due to failed flower shipments), the idea of the "end of the world" is quite intriguing to me. Somehow I tend to believe that most people are waiting for a huge, unique event (as in massive atomic bombs, perhaps as a result of a world war). That is quite a romantic view of things, I believe, perhaps influenced by religious ideas. In contrast, I think that the end of the world will come in small doses: one huge earthquake there, a tsunami here, an epidemic crisis later. Such events will be analyzed individually, and forgotten later, as we usually do with catastrophes that don't concern us. My point is that most of us will fail to recognize the combined effect of the several "mini" ends of the world. As a result, humanity will reach its end without realizing it, and perhaps the very end of the world itself will be seen as yet another of those catastrophes that is forgotten the day after.