The Philippines is being shaken like a martini at a Dorian Gray party, and the death toll is only beginning to rise. Hundreds of aftershocks follow the initial tremor, a grim reminder that nature does not negotiate. We moderns, with our smartphones and skyscrapers, imagine ourselves masters of the environment.
But the earth has a way of reminding us that we are merely tenants, and it is the landlord. The Roman historian Livy would have recognised this scene: a city humbled, the old gods reasserting their dominion. We call it a natural disaster, but that is a cowardly evasion.
It is a judgement, not of divine wrath, but of our collective hubris. Every building that collapses was built with a blind eye to geology. Every life lost is a consequence of poverty and poor planning.
The aftershocks are not the story. The story is that we have built a world that cannot withstand the planet it sits on. This is the Fall of Rome, but in slow motion, and with reinforced concrete.
The Filipino people are resilient, we are told. But resilience should not be the mark of a civilisation. It should be prudence.
We should not need to be resilient. We should need to be wise. And we are not.
We are decadent, distracted, and doomed to repeat the catastrophe until we learn the lesson. The earthquake is not the news. Our inability to prepare for the inevitable is the news.
And the aftershocks will continue, not just in the Philippines, but in every city that builds on sand.
