There’s a small silver lining in the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina: At an awful cost, humanity is learning some lessons. History strongly suggests that, by putting these and countless other lessons to use, however imperfectly, we make a contribution to a better world, just as our predecessors did and our successors will do.
It makes you stop and think. In the development of the universe over the past 13-plus billion years, we’ve been given some marvelous abilities:
- to observe;
- to communicate;
- to care about others;
- to decide that the world ought to be different;
- to act, singly and in concert;
- to learn from experience, both ours and that of others;
- to change our ways and our world — that is, to adapt;
- to keep going.
We all exercise these abilities, in varying degrees at various times. When we do, we play a tiny role — often an indirect one, and sometimes badly and at great cost — in the story of the continuing creation of the universe.
If you think, as I do, that this continuing creation seems to be the work of a Creator, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that we creatures are workers in a cosmic construction crew.
Wow.
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