Intelligent Design...
I have lived in the US for almost 20 years. Why that is significant, is because I find myself regularly comparing the US I encountered at my time of immigration and the US I experience today as a resident.
Coming from Europe, where everything old is quaint, and everything contemporary is well-designed I have often stood astonished at America’s widespread disregard of its history. I’m not talking about the almost propagandistic US history taught to America’s youngsters—at the exclusion of world history at large. I’m talking about its buildings, bridges, houses, neighborhoods. You’ve seen the dilapidated streets in large cities. Neighborhoods and buildings with character left to rot, houses in Victorian style ready to fall down, or an entire city wrecked by the shoddy engineering of a bunch of brittle levees.
In a lowest-bid-wins world, when there are no higher ideals, no higher aims, no desires to preserve, to restore, to improve, everything is allowed to slowly turn into the abandoned cardboard homeless people crawl under to keep dry.
Today, there’s a lot of talk about intelligent design. If you don’t know what it is you can look it up. I’m all for it. Foresight, rather than intelligent design was available when the first levees were built in the late 1800’s, but intelligent design was still absent when their purpose was last evaluated.
If you want to attribute intelligent design to your god, that’s your prerogative, but god doesn’t build levees, the Dutch do. If you’re more interested in attributing intelligent design to someone or something you can’t see, feel, or smell, yet created the heavens and the pimple on which we live maybe you’re overlooking the intelligent design that should go into every man-made project. The cars you build should not blow up and burn everyone inside, and neither should your levees break and if one does, there should be intelligent design that deals with such a “what if” scenario. Like, duh, a second levee, or a system of dikes, ditches, and containing walls. A system that could allow flooding of one area, but not all areas…
If you’re unfamiliar with the intelligent design the Dutch applied to safeguard their below sea level country from the ocean you really ought to study the Dutch Delta waterworks, especially if you are Army Corps of Engineers long associated with America's appaling slate of yearly floodings and faced with an annual review of a historical American town below sea level, like, for instance, New Orleans.
Then again, putting the protection of dry land into the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers may not be such a good idea, as their recommendations may be compromised with low bid contract awarding, resulting in a single cement wall to keep an entire ocean at bay. The Dutch on the other hand, having spared no expense built themselves a protection system that not only takes into account the threat of the elements, but also consecutive threats if the first defense fails. Systems of dikes, water management, levees, and pumps are intelligently designed to thwart as much as possible occurrences as have taken place in, let’s say, Bangladesh, or New Orleans.
Did I mention I’m Dutch? Imagine my growing bewilderment when at least three weeks went by after Hurricane Katrina and the demise of New Orleans before anyone (I believe it was Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s Hardball) mentioned the Dutch storm-water systems.
Days later Al Franken, of The Al Franken Show on Air America, featured a Dutch ex-minister who illuminated him on what the Dutch installed to protect their country.
Now, as I write this, the levees in New Orleans are breaking again, this time under pressure from Hurricane Rita’s rainfall. Is it not maddening that after 4 weeks a second flooding identical to the first is occurring? Whatever had been done to stop the first flooding apparently did not include shoring up the levees that had not broken yet.
Now, what I’d like to hear next time someone mentions intelligent design, is the good news that the best heads have come together to design a practical and lasting solution for a long-ignored problem. And, this is probably hardest for Americans to accept, but think Nike, think call-centers, think Wall-Mart: if you can’t get it here, go overseas and outsource. I’m sure there are some excellent Dutch engineers sitting by the phone right now, ready to apply intelligent design to any dike worthy of their twiddling thumbs…
©2005 Rudolf Helder
Coming from Europe, where everything old is quaint, and everything contemporary is well-designed I have often stood astonished at America’s widespread disregard of its history. I’m not talking about the almost propagandistic US history taught to America’s youngsters—at the exclusion of world history at large. I’m talking about its buildings, bridges, houses, neighborhoods. You’ve seen the dilapidated streets in large cities. Neighborhoods and buildings with character left to rot, houses in Victorian style ready to fall down, or an entire city wrecked by the shoddy engineering of a bunch of brittle levees.
In a lowest-bid-wins world, when there are no higher ideals, no higher aims, no desires to preserve, to restore, to improve, everything is allowed to slowly turn into the abandoned cardboard homeless people crawl under to keep dry.
Today, there’s a lot of talk about intelligent design. If you don’t know what it is you can look it up. I’m all for it. Foresight, rather than intelligent design was available when the first levees were built in the late 1800’s, but intelligent design was still absent when their purpose was last evaluated.
If you want to attribute intelligent design to your god, that’s your prerogative, but god doesn’t build levees, the Dutch do. If you’re more interested in attributing intelligent design to someone or something you can’t see, feel, or smell, yet created the heavens and the pimple on which we live maybe you’re overlooking the intelligent design that should go into every man-made project. The cars you build should not blow up and burn everyone inside, and neither should your levees break and if one does, there should be intelligent design that deals with such a “what if” scenario. Like, duh, a second levee, or a system of dikes, ditches, and containing walls. A system that could allow flooding of one area, but not all areas…
If you’re unfamiliar with the intelligent design the Dutch applied to safeguard their below sea level country from the ocean you really ought to study the Dutch Delta waterworks, especially if you are Army Corps of Engineers long associated with America's appaling slate of yearly floodings and faced with an annual review of a historical American town below sea level, like, for instance, New Orleans.
Then again, putting the protection of dry land into the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers may not be such a good idea, as their recommendations may be compromised with low bid contract awarding, resulting in a single cement wall to keep an entire ocean at bay. The Dutch on the other hand, having spared no expense built themselves a protection system that not only takes into account the threat of the elements, but also consecutive threats if the first defense fails. Systems of dikes, water management, levees, and pumps are intelligently designed to thwart as much as possible occurrences as have taken place in, let’s say, Bangladesh, or New Orleans.
Did I mention I’m Dutch? Imagine my growing bewilderment when at least three weeks went by after Hurricane Katrina and the demise of New Orleans before anyone (I believe it was Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s Hardball) mentioned the Dutch storm-water systems.
Days later Al Franken, of The Al Franken Show on Air America, featured a Dutch ex-minister who illuminated him on what the Dutch installed to protect their country.
Now, as I write this, the levees in New Orleans are breaking again, this time under pressure from Hurricane Rita’s rainfall. Is it not maddening that after 4 weeks a second flooding identical to the first is occurring? Whatever had been done to stop the first flooding apparently did not include shoring up the levees that had not broken yet.
Now, what I’d like to hear next time someone mentions intelligent design, is the good news that the best heads have come together to design a practical and lasting solution for a long-ignored problem. And, this is probably hardest for Americans to accept, but think Nike, think call-centers, think Wall-Mart: if you can’t get it here, go overseas and outsource. I’m sure there are some excellent Dutch engineers sitting by the phone right now, ready to apply intelligent design to any dike worthy of their twiddling thumbs…
©2005 Rudolf Helder
posted by Rudolf Helder at Friday, September 23, 2005
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