Tag Archives: disaster

Dealing with Reality: Fear Factor!

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Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together.

Daniel 5:6

Anguish [seizes me] like the pangs of a woman in travail,

and my heart is troubled within me.

I am clothed in blackness and my tongue cleaves to the roof [of my mouth];

[for I fear the mischief of] their heart and their inclination (towards evil)

appears as bitterness before me.

The light of my face is dimmed to darkness and my radiance is turned to decay.

The Dead Sea Scrolls-The War Scroll

We are entering a day and time unparalleled in the history of our planet where we will see catastrophes of unimaginable scope and magnitude that will never be seen again. The intensity of the events and the swiftness with which they move will cause fear and terror in the hearts of all men. We must honestly acknowledge we all fear, even the bravest of individuals, so that we can effectively deal with this emotion.

Humans and other creatures alike experience fear. Fear is a natural response bestowed upon us by our Creator to alert His creation of things that threaten well-being and life. Once the fear factor has been evoked people are given additional biological resources to deal with the terror they must endure, known as the ‘fight or flight’ response. People have a natural inclination to run from something that they believe places them in mortal jeopardy. This fear can be reality or it can be perceived. It is at this cross-road a person needs to psychologically make a decision on how they will deal with fear. The decision a person makes will become a factor in determining whether they live or die, depending upon the situation. Continue reading →

Disaster, Tyranny and Government

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Burying Dead During Russian Famine

Either we learn the lessons of history or we are doomed to repeat them.

 

Pitirim Solokin

Memoirs of Disaster, Tyranny and Government in Russia

Fair Use Accessed October 11, 2007

Disaster has shaped the course that the common people and government will gravitate to.  This is an extensive look at how a common man lived through a disastrous time in Russia and how the government responded. This essay also looks at how disaster is shaping American politics after the events of 911 and Katrina.  It is a long essay but worth the pearls of wisdom one gains from someone who endured through what we in America are about to experience.

The vibrant complex life of the great late sociologist-philosopher Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889-1968) was the fertile soil in which his ideas about humans and society flourished, as his many books show us still, including Man and Society in Calamity, published in 1942. One of his ideas was that catastrophes (he called them calamities) shifted control of social groups from individuals and private groups to governments. He identified four calamities: famine, pestilence, war, and revolution. In his words,

 “The main uniform effect of calamities upon the political and social structure of society is an expansion of governmental regulation, regimentation, and control of social relationships and a decrease in the regulation and management of social relationships by individuals and private groups.” (1,2)

 Sorokin continued:

“The expansion of governmental control and regulation assumes a variety of forms, embracing socialistic or communistic totalitarianism, fascist totalitarianism, monarchial autocracy, and theocracy. Now it is effected by a revolutionary regime, now by a counterrevolutionary regime; now by a military dictatorship, now by a dictatorship, now by a dictatorial bureaucracy. From both the quantitative and the qualitative point of view, such an expansion of governmental control means a decrease of freedom, a curtailment of the autonomy of individuals and private groups in the regulation and management of their individual behavior and their social relationships, the decline of constitutional and democratic institutions.” (1)

How did Sorokin come to this understanding of the effect of catastrophes on political organization? Was his understanding theoretical, practical, or both? Are his syntheses valid today? Continue reading →