Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal

In Junot Diaz's essay Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal, Diaz addresses what apocalypses are and what they reveal, specifically the Haiti earthquake.  In the essay, he makes a compelling point that the Haiti earthquake, along with the 2004 Asian earthquake and Katrina, was not a natural disaster but a social disaster.  His perspective of a natural disaster versus a social disaster stood out to me the most because I had never really thought of an earthquake, tsunami, or hurricane as a fault of the human race.  Instead of blaming it on nature, Diaz willingly accepts these disasters as events that could have been prevented.  I think it takes a lot of vulnerability and bravery to accept one's mistake and his ability to do so for the world reflects his idea that these catastrophes are opportunities for us to take responsibility for what we see, to change.  Diaz gives us the true facts about the poverty and devastation in Haiti, forcing us to face what most would turn away from.  Even as he analyzes the poor management of foreign powers in Haiti and all the consequences it has caused, Diaz still manages to see light at the end of the tunnel.

09/11/2014 Ian Crowley

In "Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal," Junot Diaz's main point of discussion is the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. This natural disaster in Haiti is considered an Apocalyptic event because it resembled the imagined final ending of the world. It was very interesting to me that Junot Diaz states that the earthquake revealed Haiti to the rest of the world. Before the earthquake people payed little attention to Haiti. This disaster revealed to the world the economic desperation that was taking place in Haiti. According to Diaz, 80 percent of the population of Haiti is living below the poverty line. Factors such as deforestation, and poor political structures contribute to the failing economy in Haiti. To me this story was very eye opening. I never thought about the fact that people only directed their attention to Haiti due to the earthquake. I think that maybe we should direct our attention toward other suffering countries as well.

Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal

      In Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal, Diaz made several arguments pointing to catastrophes and natural disasters as being "social disasters"; meaning that they are a result of problems in the societies that they occur in. Diaz highlights how Haiti was place that had little media attention until there was an earthquake in the region. One problem mentioned was the deforestation which "is both caused by and causes poverty." This stands out because it highlights how for Haitians, there was little way out of the problems that they already started in the region. In addition to these problems, US subsidized rice "made a previously self-sufficient country overwhelmingly dependent on foreign rice". Western powers also installed "a puppet president" and imposed a policy that was "more favorable to foreign investments." This demonstrates that the intervention that Haiti received before the earthquake only made their situation worse. This is something to be mindful of because this aspect of the situation in Haiti was never shown on the media. Diaz uses Haiti's apocalyptic social disaster to make people more conscious of the inevitability of a world apocalypse if people fail to change.

Response to "Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal" by Junot Díaz

I really enjoyed Diaz's explanation of an apocalypse and emphasizing that it can be meant as "a disruptive event that provokes revelation." I wanted to interject how relative and amazing that statement is. I really didn't know anything about Haiti until the earthquake. Catastrophes are not just about destruction or ruin, they bring to light a lot of things we forget is happening in the world. They really do "expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities." It helped the world bring a lot of attention to these critical matters that we should have paid attention to from earlier on.

Blog Post - Junot Diaz - Apocalypse: What Disasters May Reveal

Diaz makes a very crucial point with this essay, one which I had not considered myself. The damage of a "natural disaster" extends far beyond the point at which such disasters fall out of the forefront of public news. Haiti, viewed here as a symbol for the imminent future of society, creates a powerful image of devastation on all fronts (economic, social, structural, etc), one that we may see extended to the rest of the world sooner than we imagine. At the completion of my high school career, I returned home from boarding school to find a nearly post-apocalyptic scene in my bedroom: The walls were lined with nearly 14 years of junk, the closets were overflowing, and the space entirely cramped. Over the next 2-3 weeks, I went through a long and difficult, albeit incredibly cathartic process of cleaning out the entirety of the room. Over that period, I went through every item or scrap in the space and got rid of everything I didn't want. In essence, I was cleaning out my life. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and in it, I see a parallel to the current state of affairs: The powers that be are nothing more than a big teenager who doesn't want to clean his room. With a disaster like Haiti or Japan, it's almost as if the big teenager has just broken a lamp in the room, and instead of throwing out the pieces and starting new, he instead decides to polish the shards scattered across the floor, leaving them sitting there, perfectly situated to step on later.

Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal - Reaction by Jake Pozin

Of all the insights that Junot Diaz offered in his piece, the most interesting and thought provoking idea was of how we perceive disasters. Whenever a disaster occurs, the first thing we think of is that the disaster was a natural cause. Diaz offered the idea that the disasters in reality are caused socially. The idea itself is mindblowing! People often assume the apocalypse is the end of the world and will occur naturally, but by the way Diaz explains it, these disasters, in reality, are caused by us. We take for granted the small chances of problems that our actions may cause. For example, the United States government's decision to sell hundreds of square miles of wetlands to developers sets up a prime opportunity for accidents to occur. This insight by Diaz allows for thought-provoking reflection upon how our actions affect the world around us. It brings up the importance of sustainability and makes us think of our true impact on our surroundings. Diaz's ideas are so often overlooked, but after reading his work it truly makes one reflect about his impact on the world and the possible apocalypse.

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?