Friday, Sept. 2, 2005 Dear Readers: Well, Paris seems normal enough tonight. The rollerblade acrobats are doing their thing outside Notre Dame, Shakespeare & Co. Books is buzzing away, and the walkways along the Seine are full of life. But I have a feeling the world is different. My mind keeps surveying the devastation in New Orleans, and playing through some of the possible or even probable implications. I have a little sample of the feeling at the scene because I once lived through a hurricane and regional flood, and I know it gets worse with time. It's a kind of disaster that settles in over a while. But very few of us in or from North America have lived through anything of this scale or intensity. And it's an extremely strange thought that a region of the country, or even part of one, has descended into armed anarchy. Strange, but I mean terrifying. I don't know if fear is spiritual, but what we are witnessing is a warning. It is a real life what-if. New Orleans and it surroundings has a lot more in common with most of American than does lower Manhattan. It is more of a typical scene, and typical infrastructure of the country. New Orleans itself is of course one of a kind; one of the great American cultural treasures. Cities are more than their land and buildings; they are human patterns, and the pattern is stronger than the weather and the effects of water -- usually. What has been on my mind tonight is the subject of whole-systems thinking. What happened in one region of the country is spreading out and affecting everywhere. The price of gasoline is not merely a convenience. It is the economic blood of the country -- a rural country, where people have already been struggling to pay for the gas to drive to and from work. We are seeing how a stress on one part of a system, uncompensated, can begin to affect the whole thing. We resist thinking in whole-systems terms because it's inconvenient, and because in reality it's impossible to take accountability and responsibility for every subsequent reaction of every action we take. My feeling, however, is that we're about to get a big lesson in whole-system dynamics. In the end, this will work to our benefit, but it may take a while. There is no reason why every bite of food we eat in the United States should be shipped 2,000 miles across the country. And that may finally start to come to an end. However, it's not unreasonable to consider whether this disaster can have a ripple effect that sends the country into a depression. We can hope not; we can each do our part; we can participate in the ways most available and meaningful to us; and then we have to live, watch, and see. The ultimate whole-system is the Earth itself. The way we have to live, at minimum, will continue to put a strain on the ecosystem for a long time, and the long run is exactly the terms on which we need to be thinking. This is difficult when you need to buy gas to get to work to pay the rent and eat; or when you don't have a home at all and don't know where half your family is. I hope we get it this time.     e