Dwight Brisbin, 09/09/2014

“Apocalypse” is a term which has been in common use since the 13^th century, but events and disasters for which the word would be an apt description date back to the beginning of written history and presumably even earlier. That being said, Junot Diaz, in Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal, argues that the key to avoiding disaster is to simply become aware of the causes of each one and to implement some plan which attempts to avoid another apocalypse from occurring. It is readily apparent to me that Diaz (perhaps out of convenience for his message) has left out tremendous amounts of evidence, namely historical references, which can lead one to correctly assume that learning a lesson cannot be the only factor involved. I think that Diaz is able to argue his point because he does not draw attention to the fact that such a large population cannot simply change its policies or even respond to an event in a timely fashion: in the modern world, it is perhaps impossible to mobilize all seven billion plus inhabitants. With that in mind, consider how society and political bodies have responded to massive apocalypses in the past, be it the black plague, the Yangzte River Flood in the early 20^th century, or smallpox, given enough time, these disasters have been somehow prevented from occurring again (and in the case of diseases and viruses, innumerable regulations and standards have lowered the rates of infection for new diseases). The lessons we must look to are the responses to those horrible events. To close, I am not attempting to refute Diaz in saying that each disaster should be a lesson, quite the opposite actually; I only wish to show that in attempt to learn, the lessons that others have learned throughout history must be considered as well, otherwise, we run the risk of interpreting incorrectly the very events we would like to prevent. Is that not a far more dangerous possibility?