It is now rainy season. As predicted there will be a lot of rain due to the la nina phenomenon. Floods, landslides, blown away houses, destroyed infrastructures and deaths will dominate the headlines. It happens every time. And every time, we will be caught off-guard again. As if we never went through the same experience before. There is a good term for it—STUPIDITY.
Somebody said every thing we need to learn, we learned in kindergarten. One is the parable of THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER. The ant works so hard every minute of everyday to prepare for the rainy days. The grasshopper just played or was having a good time, all the time.
The grasshopper is like us. You see people, particularly those who need to prepare for the rainy days just drinking and just plain lazy. No initiative. Almost always, they are the ones being rescued when the rains and wind come howling. Either they have to fished out of floods or rivers or dug out from the mud. Relief goods have to be delivered to them for them to survive. And they will come out of the disaster almost the same. No initiative. And you know where they will be come the next rainy season.
They would not bother to find a stone or discarded tires to put on their roofs to prevent these from being blown away.
They know how ants survive disasters. It does not require some genius to see it. Just hard work and persistence. Yet they refuse to see.
And so we remain a third world country. Sometimes there is merit to what somebody said, we might need more hardships to wake up to the reality we need to roll up our sleeves and exert effort to live like humans.**