WHAT DOES KATRINA (DIS)PROVE ABOUT HOMO HOMINI LUPUS? (9/14/05)

Homo homini lupus. “Man is a beast to his fellow man.”

The damning aphorism is associated with John Hobbes. Not a pleasant thought and certainly rooted a long litany of horrors: Crusades, Holocaust, enslavement of African Americans, Killing Fields of Cambodia, Saddam’s genocide.

Sometimes the lines of distinction become obscured through protest, civil disobedience, or military intervention. But sometimes, most vexing and conscience-shaking, are the instances in which heretofore civil people descend into bestiality when the values of decency are either stripped away or challenged to the nth degree by uncontrollable, immeasurable disaster.

Katrina presented such a quagmire of protracted, intolerable disasters. It vindicated Hobbes’s observation almost to the point of victory – but, thanks be unto God – not entirely. A man expropriating food from a supermarket to provide simple sustenance for his family. Bestiality? Waiting for more civilized distribution committees to be formed while children languish and die? I think not. Be that bestiality, then call me a beast.

Likewise, saving ones family before another’s. Bestiality? Could we accept that as the punchline of a sermon delivered by the most pious man of the cloth? Doubtful. Not sharing when sharing might mean death for everyone? A tough call. But, is the instinct for human survival necessarily an ipso facto sign of bestiality?

No, the real issue of homo homini lupus is about looting and sniping.

How easy and foolish it would be to say that the problem here is racism or classism or some kind of negative nurturing that happens before a child is old enough to defend against it. The common denominator of all these simpleminded explanations is that they are pernicious baloney.

This we do know: Bold, instantaneous, righteously indignant outcries “Stop this at once!” from spokespeople of morality – particularly clergy – were relatively tepid, few and far between. The outcries were unexpected as well, because we have heard so many otherwise articulate clergypeople consistently hammer home that salvation is entirely detached from honorable deeds.

Likewise, as the victims are stacked up liked cordwood, snipers are arrested, decent people are acknowledged and heroes are rewarded, we will discover only one transcendent truth: We will find a statistically equal distribution of beast and angel – black and white, privileged and underprivileged, Christian and Jew, churchgoers and atheists . . . ah yes, and open-minded and bigots.

Finally, upbringing will matter more than any other factor, but it won’t simply be at momma’s breast. It will be comprehensive. It will include the kind of neighborhood, even block, about which Dr. King spoke, where every mother was understood to be the guarantor, disciplinarian and tattletale of every other mother’s son and daughter. It will include schools that are not afraid of teaching values, despite the canards warning of a cabal of secular humanism. It will include churches and synagogues that preach as core doctrine that heaven derives from good deeds.

We would hope that sooner, rather than later, we will ponder the what-if’s God or whatever natural force spins another Katrina our way: levees, pumps, evacuation routes, integrity of construction, emergency shelter and provisions. What about homo homini lupus? Will it become part of the agenda when we think about how to save lives when disasters kick us in the gut? Will Hobbes win the battle that evil can never be erased from human nature? Or, will taking potshots at firefighters and cops one day become just an ugly memory, because we have finally figured out ways to nurture our kids and not tolerate even the first time they act like a little beast?

Hobbes and I, I’m sorry to say, are still cynical. Please, please, prove us wrong.