Change

" Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead."
Aldous Huxley


Change is inevitable, indeed needed to proceed in life. People like consistency, they plan on it, so they can plan their lives, and planning is a good exercise in frustration. For every plan you have, there will be at least one thing to mess it up. Think Murphy's Law- If it can go wrong, it will. My corallary to that law would be- If it can go wrong, and will, it will go twice as wrong as you anticipated. What I mean by that is that resistance to change is an exercise in futility, but reliance to plans set in stone are not a good thing either. I do not mean for you to stop making plans, but to recognise that sometimes you just have to go with the flow of events out of your control.
Look at New Orleans- they thought they had a plan, and they found that they were vastly overmatched by nature. Now, they have to change their vision of the city. Some people want it back the way it was, but no way, Jose. The way it was was not good for many people, just familiar to most people. Now things must change, and some people do not like this, but if things are not improved, the next time it could be worse. If it is changed, perhaps the next time won't be as bad. At any rate, some of the people will get left out of the new New Orleans, and that is probably a good thing, as heartless as that might sound. Some people always fall by the wayside during a vast change, and believe me, NOLA has been due for a good flushing for a looooooong time.
That sounds cold, and perhaps it is, coming from someone who doesn't have a dog in the hunt, so to speak, but my advantage in looking at this is that I can be objective. Somewhat, anyway- I have seen the crime increase in Houston because of evacuees, and some of the trashed apartments they have left in their wake- so I can state that, like a spring cleaning of one's house, this was long overdue.
The wonder of it all is that it took nature so long to get around to NOLA. After all, it sits right on the Gulf Coast, TWELVE FEET under sea level, and nobody thought that might not be a good thing? That just shows how resistance to change might just kill you.
Historians can now record that there were nine cities of Troy, each one built on top of the other. Don't you think after the third or forth Troy was dust and ash, someone asks " Do you think maybe we might think of a different neighborhood to settle in?"
A person can find countless examples of people refusing to change. They occur with depressing frequency- Israel and the Arabs, Sudan famine, these are global in scope, but boneheaded none the less. I mean, if all there is sand around you , you might think of moving. If you live below sea level, do not be surprised when Mother Nature pays you a visit, because IT WILL HAPPEN.
Oh, maybe not today, or tomorrow, but one day there will be another hurricane, and if Mayor " Chocolate City" Nagin doesn't get off of his beignet-softened ass, he will end up the most reviled man since Hitler. I mean, let's face it- the people most affected by this don't give a rat's ass if the help they receive is Democrat, or Republican, they just need the help. What's more important is that they get a plan that attempts to minimize the impact. Let us face the facts here, we can not raise the city twelve feet, so other things need to be thought out.
The people of New Orleans need a better plan than Nagin's "bend over and kiss your ass goodbye". I figure that must be his plan, because I haven't heard of any other plan come from his lips.
The people deserve better than him.