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| Why do we see hurricanes like Harvey and Irma as otherworldly omens? | Why do we see hurricanes like Harvey and Irma as otherworldly omens? |
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| Tue 12 Sep 2017 08.00 BST | |
| Last modified on Wed 13 Sep 2017 01.49 BST | |
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| The strange and terrible news from our meteorological world seems to collide ominously in our unsettling times. Last week a scientific report was published, indicating that the remarkable and tragic stranding of 29 sperm whales on North Sea coasts last January may have been caused by solar storms that confused the animals’ geomagnetic navigation – and drove them on to shallow beaches to die. | The strange and terrible news from our meteorological world seems to collide ominously in our unsettling times. Last week a scientific report was published, indicating that the remarkable and tragic stranding of 29 sperm whales on North Sea coasts last January may have been caused by solar storms that confused the animals’ geomagnetic navigation – and drove them on to shallow beaches to die. |
| Meanwhile, the second apocalyptic weather event in as many weeks struck the Caribbean and the southern US. Even in our supposedly rational world, it is hard not to see these natural disasters as omens. Great whales dying because of the same solar activity that has sparked the beautiful but eerie curtains of northern lights in our skies. | Meanwhile, the second apocalyptic weather event in as many weeks struck the Caribbean and the southern US. Even in our supposedly rational world, it is hard not to see these natural disasters as omens. Great whales dying because of the same solar activity that has sparked the beautiful but eerie curtains of northern lights in our skies. |
| From creation myths to The Tempest, storms and sacrifices and signs go hand in hand with the way we try to understand our chaotic world. They wreak havoc – with lives, with political careers (witness George W Bush’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina). The modern expression “weather bomb” takes on an awful meaning. In his recent book Sea of Storms, the US academic Stuart B Schwartz observes that the uber-storms of the 21st century have a new power over us. “In a way, the hurricanes and how societies deal with them have become symbolic of competing world views.” East and west, north and south: the new world order encompassed by compass points. | From creation myths to The Tempest, storms and sacrifices and signs go hand in hand with the way we try to understand our chaotic world. They wreak havoc – with lives, with political careers (witness George W Bush’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina). The modern expression “weather bomb” takes on an awful meaning. In his recent book Sea of Storms, the US academic Stuart B Schwartz observes that the uber-storms of the 21st century have a new power over us. “In a way, the hurricanes and how societies deal with them have become symbolic of competing world views.” East and west, north and south: the new world order encompassed by compass points. |
| We account for disaster not in our own culpability as drivers of climate change and instigators of the Anthropocene, but in dreams and myths and faith. It is the sense of the unseen and the unpredictable that disturbs us. In the storms of 2014 that raked the soft southern coast of England – vulnerable shores lacking the rocky bulwarks of Cornwall, Wales or Scotland – we seemed to have been taken by surprise. Used to experiencing the world through the manipulable screens in our hands, those swirling patterns graphically represented in the nightly weather forecast had become vividly, dangerously alive. | We account for disaster not in our own culpability as drivers of climate change and instigators of the Anthropocene, but in dreams and myths and faith. It is the sense of the unseen and the unpredictable that disturbs us. In the storms of 2014 that raked the soft southern coast of England – vulnerable shores lacking the rocky bulwarks of Cornwall, Wales or Scotland – we seemed to have been taken by surprise. Used to experiencing the world through the manipulable screens in our hands, those swirling patterns graphically represented in the nightly weather forecast had become vividly, dangerously alive. |
| At least the sea is visible in its rage; the wind is an unseen monster. You do not hear the wind; you hear what it leaves in its wake. Its sound is defined by the shape of everything else – trees, buildings, waves; by what gets in its way. Perhaps that’s why it preys on our imagination so disturbingly. It is the sound of the world’s motion, as if the invisible spinning of the globe had suddenly become tangible; a world blown out of kilter. For what sins are we being punished? What have we done wrong? In Caribbean hurricanes during the 17th century, Spanish priests would toss crucifixes into the waves or hold the Host up into the wind, for fear that the transgressions of their flocks were responsible for God’s displeasure. The contemporary equivalent is the virally popular social media call from Ryon Edwards for his fellow Floridians to shoot at Irma - “LET’S SHOW IRMA THAT WE SHOOT FIRST” - despite warnings that their bullets would fall to earth, with fatal results. | At least the sea is visible in its rage; the wind is an unseen monster. You do not hear the wind; you hear what it leaves in its wake. Its sound is defined by the shape of everything else – trees, buildings, waves; by what gets in its way. Perhaps that’s why it preys on our imagination so disturbingly. It is the sound of the world’s motion, as if the invisible spinning of the globe had suddenly become tangible; a world blown out of kilter. For what sins are we being punished? What have we done wrong? In Caribbean hurricanes during the 17th century, Spanish priests would toss crucifixes into the waves or hold the Host up into the wind, for fear that the transgressions of their flocks were responsible for God’s displeasure. The contemporary equivalent is the virally popular social media call from Ryon Edwards for his fellow Floridians to shoot at Irma - “LET’S SHOW IRMA THAT WE SHOOT FIRST” - despite warnings that their bullets would fall to earth, with fatal results. |
| Sometimes it seems we have not moved far from such superstitious gestures at the elemental. In 1520 the German artist Albrecht Dürer travelled to the half-land, half-sea coast of Zeeland in the Netherlands, in search of a stranded whale. It had disappeared by the time he reached the location, but instead he caught a fever that would eventually take his life. That whale, whose demise we might now scientifically ascribe to astronomical forces, became aligned in Dürer’s mind with the omens he saw in the skies: comets and other phenomena that echoed or even predicted European fortunes, good or bad. The genderless angel in his celebrated engraving Melencolia I, looks up at just such a comet. Dürer sought to rationalise, even as he aestheticised, the natural world. | Sometimes it seems we have not moved far from such superstitious gestures at the elemental. In 1520 the German artist Albrecht Dürer travelled to the half-land, half-sea coast of Zeeland in the Netherlands, in search of a stranded whale. It had disappeared by the time he reached the location, but instead he caught a fever that would eventually take his life. That whale, whose demise we might now scientifically ascribe to astronomical forces, became aligned in Dürer’s mind with the omens he saw in the skies: comets and other phenomena that echoed or even predicted European fortunes, good or bad. The genderless angel in his celebrated engraving Melencolia I, looks up at just such a comet. Dürer sought to rationalise, even as he aestheticised, the natural world. |
| Yet we still anthropomorphise the elements. We name “weather events” – storm Doris, hurricane Irma – as if to bring them into our dominion. Donald Trump creates a supposedly reassuring narrative by expressing his awe – “Hurricane looks like largest ever recorded in the Atlantic!” – as if a 140 character tweet will magically extend his power over the storm, like the Wizard of Oz, even as he denies our responsibility for it. His gesture is no more effective, perhaps even less so, than those Caribbean priests holding up their Hosts against the wind, or the call to shoot at Irma. Hurricane Katrina was an augury of the end for George W Bush. Who knows what these new storms will hold in store for our world leaders? | Yet we still anthropomorphise the elements. We name “weather events” – storm Doris, hurricane Irma – as if to bring them into our dominion. Donald Trump creates a supposedly reassuring narrative by expressing his awe – “Hurricane looks like largest ever recorded in the Atlantic!” – as if a 140 character tweet will magically extend his power over the storm, like the Wizard of Oz, even as he denies our responsibility for it. His gesture is no more effective, perhaps even less so, than those Caribbean priests holding up their Hosts against the wind, or the call to shoot at Irma. Hurricane Katrina was an augury of the end for George W Bush. Who knows what these new storms will hold in store for our world leaders? |
| • Philip Hoare is an author, whose books include Leviathan or, The Whale; The Sea Inside; and RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR | • Philip Hoare is an author, whose books include Leviathan or, The Whale; The Sea Inside; and RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR |
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