Vanity

Vanity

The temptation to make WW III mythic is great: hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, the earth rising up against its despoilers, wrathful gods blowing fierce winds, an underworld of fire forced to erupt, if not in self-defense, at least in vengeance; and Neptune, furious, triton in hand, raging against the defiling of his domain –

But why would the gods strike the poor and the helpless, no less victims than the dolphins or deer? Is there influence peddling across the sacred divide? Are the aged, trapped on the high floors of assisted living also doomed as human sacrifice to appease the Grand Designers? How are we to understand the frantic dogs, the drowned cats? Indeed, if avian flu is one more punishing act of the gods, why must chickens suffer as disease prepares itself for a full-fledged attack on humankind?

Vanity is at the center of all this calculation, all this imagining. If we grant the god-seeking impulse and credibility at all, are we incapable of seeing that the fish themselves may have offended some divinity? Perhaps some awful sea serpent has annoyed Valhalla with its slippery ways, it’s ancient interference with Viking exploration – and the gods, who had high hopes of extending their rule to the New World, are still pissed off. Didn’t the pre-Columbian Mexicans worship a plumed serpent and, therefore, some winged sinner, a bird on the run, provoked the flu – humans may be collaterally damaged and not the primary target at all!