Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Collapse of Civilization

This is topic Collapse of Civilization in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

I hesitate to start this thread because of the delicate nature of the topic. But am I the only one who has looked at the collapse of civilization in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and thought, "There is something important happening here that can be useful in a story." I see the veneer of society stripped away by the forces of nature, leaving behind the angst, anger, and poverty that existed in the city, the entire time. But now it's been revealed; anarchy sets in, and the powers in charge are no longer in power. It's an incredible drama and it's taking shape before our eyes. It's like sci-fi come to life. I'm wondering if this event has stirred the storyteller in anyone else?

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what you're talking about. The criminals committed crimes, most other people did not. I see plenty of lawlessness and casual disregard for the lives and welfare of others during a typical commute, so I'm not under the impression that there ever is any "veneer of society" to be stripped away.

That said, if anyone is suffering delusions about the true nature of humanity and this helps them, then that's good.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

I will be writing about a variation on this for OSC's writing class at SVU. It wasn't the breakdown of order that gripped me so much as the overwhelming response of support from the rest of the country. Even Hatrack, which is just a discussion board, collects for Katrina victims (not the admins, AFAIK, but the members). And Anne Rice wrote, for the NY Times, that the rest of the country "turned its back" on N.O. because we think of it as Sin City.

What if we really had?

I've also read a flash on Liberty Hall about the disaster.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

I've also been interested in social collapse -- true social collapse, massive population reduction, civilization essentially destroyed -- from reading Jared Diamond's book Collapse. I got 2 stories about it. I think it's out of my system now!

Posted by jinkx (Member # 2798) on :

I'm not sure if what happened in New Orleans is the best example of society crumbling. Perhaps it's a better example of how society, when faced with such chaos and tragedy, can come together, even when leadership is nowhere to be found, and rebuild itself to become better as a whole.
It was known as sin city before this, but what will it be known as now, after it has been rebuilt? Will it become a better or worse city because of what has happened?

Either way you view it though, there is definitely a great story to be told.

Posted by Keeley (Member # 2088) on :

I'm sure I'll be able to come up with a lot of story ideas from this. It's hard not to. The only reason I'm trying to avoid it is because I have enough to do already.

Though tales like this just scream for use in a piece of fiction: http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46361 .

btw, my husband just told me Mayor Nagin (NOLA) has told people to stay away from New Orleans due to Tropical Storm Rita.

Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :

From here in Australia, we don't get to see the New Orleans community pulling together to help each other. We also don't get the 'sin city' connotations. We get a lot of 'we saved the pets' and ' I thought he ws dead but he moved.' type stories.

It is a pretty grim picture.

We do get 'commentaries on the commentaries' though. Like; why the hullabaloo about calling the displaced persons 'refugees' (people seeking refuge ie protection or shelter) rather than 'evacuees' (one who has been evacuated from a dangerous place)? How can someone be an 'evacuee' when they had neither the ways nor means to evacuate? Is it perceptual? That becoming 'refugees' is something that happens to people in poor countries far away?

I have no real opinion about it. It is interesting that Elan uses both the word 'angry' and 'anxious' they are both from the indo-european root 'angh' which indicates 'a person confined or in pain'.

Like Keeley, I hope Rita is gentler.

edited for clarification

[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited September 19, 2005).]

Posted by Keeley (Member # 2088) on :

quote:
Like; why the hullabaloo about calling the displaced persons 'refugees' (people seeking refuge ie protection or shelter) rather than 'evacuees' (one who has been evacuated from a dangerous place)? How can someone be an 'evacuee' when they had neither the ways nor means to evacuate? Is it perceptual? That becoming 'refugees' is something that happens to people in poor countries far away?

You pretty much pegged it. The word "refugee" also seems to connote a lack of citizenship. One comment I heard against using the word said essentially that the people of NO weren't from another country, running away from a war.

I agree that evacuee makes less sense than some other options, but I've been using it just because it has less political baggage.

I didn't say it in my original post about it, but yes, I hope Rita changes course or at least stays weak. All that rain and the levees barely fixed? At least the city hasn't let many people back in.

[This message has been edited by Keeley (edited September 19, 2005).]

Posted by JmariC (Member # 2698) on :

My first instinct was to think of all the stories from the survivors. What it was like during the hurricane and living thru it then the levee breaking and surviving trapped in a city were there was good and bad. The stories of love ones and history lost rang out to me.

But I won't ever pen a single one. As I've heard a million times, "The first idea is the easiest and should be discarded". I know there are so many other people, mostly in the literary field who will be fighting to get the stories from the people and the fictions based on the event and the romance spin-offs.

I don't need to go to the same over crowed restaraunt to get story food and I won't.

Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :

I wonder how the NO vampires are doing?

I often wonder whether people who write within the vampire/horror or associated genres have trouble not using some of these disasters as setting for their stories.

I also wonder what the ethical considerations might be.

[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited September 19, 2005).]

Posted by Mystic (Member # 2673) on :

Elan, I saw the story. I think it would make a good multi-POV story. I was thinking about it while watching the Daily Show. It would start with just some schoolboy watching the news, caring little, but then realizing it is a big deal. Next, I would follow a volunteer who helps, but only sees it as yet another crusade and cares little for the actual scenario. Finally, to the reader's relief, I would show the tale of a New Orleans survivor, probably based on my grandpa who is toughing it out down there. It is a little cheesy, but I kinda like it.

As for the whole situation, I feel really bad for the people down there, but it is human nature to hope for the worst. People say they want the storm to miss, but in reality a good deal of people (idiots mostly), would rather face the storm of the century than walk around saying they survived some small hurricane that only meteorlogists will remember and really didn't do anything, but pass over.

Posted by rcorporon (Member # 2879) on :

In Japan the events in New Orleans were portrayed as "lawless Americans shooting and looting after a tragic disaster", then cut to how the Japanese bond and help each other after a brutal typhoon kills many and destroys houses.

I was reminded of "Day of the Triffids" seeing people scatter, looting, etc., with no army or police to regulate it.

Interesting how the media in different areas portrays a certain event.

Ronnie

Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :

One of my early thoughts as I watched the Katrina footage was for the writers who lost all their work.

As far as civilization being stripped away, I understand New Orleans was one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. before Katrina hit. You didn't see the same barbarism in Mississippi or Alabama. And Mississippi is our poorest state, so poverty isn't an excuse. The mindset was already alive and well in New Orleans. Unfortunately, media reports seem to focus on New Orleans. Not surprising, since they generally zero in on the bad, more sensational news.

Posted by Keeley (Member # 2088) on :

After looking at Hurricane Rita, I'm toying with the idea of a group of people who are cursed to have natural disasters occur wherever they decide to settle down. The only way to avoid destroying the land around them is to remain nomads. If even one person decides to stay and "put down roots", nature attacks. Not sure about the rest of the story.

BTW, a mandatory evacuation has been called for Galvaston, TX. All those people who got moved to the Astrodome are going to Arkansas (last I heard). They're saying Hurricane Rita might become a category 4 by the time it hits land.

Posted by keldon02 (Member # 2398) on :

NO had a sad outcome but I'm more struck with what happened along the coast in the dozens of medium sized towns and hundreds of small towns that were obliterated. People rose to the occasion and are helping one another to clean up and rebuild. This is largely occurring without any hysterics nor great waves of crime/violence/angst (another 'angh' word).

Of course there are no Japanese tabloid writers visiting Petal, Mississippi nor Coden, Alabama. Their stereotypes would not survive such a visit.

Kolona I've visited NO fairly extensively in the past and I was always impressed by the sheer numbers of dysfunctional people. I think that when the leaven of normality left the rest could no longer rise to civilized behavior.

Survivor I don't think its a veneer of civilization so much as a ratio of civilized to uncivilized persons. The civilized ones normally help the others but when they leave there is no one to keep things going.

[This message has been edited by keldon02 (edited September 20, 2005).]

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I thought the breakdown of law and order in New Orleans came from the departure of those that enforce law and order. We are not so far from our animal origins as we would sometimes like to believe.

I was reminded of a scene in "Gone With the Wind," (in the movie, probably in the novel, too, I don't remember). Scarlett and Rhett leave Atlanta and pass by the troops pulling out of the city. Rhett says something along the lines of, "Don't be glad to see them go, for with them go the last vestiges of law and order." Followed (in the movie) by scenes of looting and smashing.

(I made it through the edge of Hurricane Charley last year, with only a few roof tiles gone (on a roof I was going to replace anyway), some interior water damage through a skylight, some screens busted in, and one tree fallen over (rotten at the base). Law and order didn't break down 'round here as much as it did in New Orleans---a couple of stores looted, and those who did it caught in the act---I attribute this to the authorities not bugging out.)

Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :

New Orleans was a special situation because crime was rampant and out of control before the levees broke. What do you expect from the criminal element when there is no authority in place?

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

I had a different spin on this than I've heard from anyone else -- I think that we got an opportunity to see who and what we (humans) really are. I often think people are crazy when they talk about the evils of humanity's past as if we've outgrown that, as if we're better than that now. One thing that stuck with me was people saying they couldn't believe this was happening here, in the United States, today. I wanted to tell them that there's nothing special about us to make us better than mother nature, nor is there anything special about "civilization" that makes us immune to the problems of lawlessness and disorder, amplified in times of opportunity for the criminals.

Criminals are the ones committing crimes? Crime is often far more opportunistic than you give credit, then, if by "criminal" you were referring to the ones who committed crimes before. Given the opportunity, the vast majority of us would steal. If we thought we could get away with it, most of us would take advantage. Very few people would return the ten thousand dollars the armored truck dropped on the sidewalk, even the ones who think they would.

But more than that...not all the looting was about greed or opportunity. On the news they commented about how all the stores had been stripped of food and bottled water. You put me and my family in a city with no power, no food, no water, and no way out and you can be damn sure that I'll do whatever it takes to keep me and my own alive -- including "stealing" the food and water from those stores (if you can call it that when there's no way to pay anyway). On that level, it is not just criminals who are committing these crimes.

Anyway, I wouldn't write a story based on these events, but I would consider using these themes, which are things I've thought of even before this hurricane hit.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Many people do commit opportunistic crimes, albeit petty ones. But it isn't anywhere near a vast majority. Unless you're talking about simple lawbreaking, since no person in the modern world doesn't break the laws pretty regularly. It's an inevitable consequence of having a legal code so complicated that not even the supposed experts really know what it says.

I'm not talking about breaking the law by "looting" food from an abandoned store. I'm talking about people that take no consideration for how their selfish acts will affect those around them (like taking all the water instead of what you'd plausibly need for yourself). This doesn't always involve breaking the law (which is somewhat amazing given how many laws we have on the books), and it isn't a matter of consideration of the possible consequences to oneself.

Commiting such a crime makes a person a criminal, whether or not law-breaking or actual harm to any specific person is involved. But like I said, most humans don't like to commit crimes against other humans. And they like to live with their own kind for the most part. So by and large that limits the criminality of the human race most of the time.

That's what I mean when I say that there isn't a "veneer of society" to be peeled away. New Orleans was particularly attractive to criminals because it was easy to commit crimes there without as much danger of official reprisal. But growing up in that city didn't turn anyone into a criminal and neither did the hurricane.

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

Survivor, I'm not sure what you're basing your information on, but it seems clear to me that given the right opportunity, a majority of people would commit a crime that they may not otherwise. The attrocities committed during wartime are a classic example of this tendency in human behavior -- and here we are often even talking about violent crimes and rape. In a more "civilized" world, white collar crime is known to be greatly opportunistic in nature. Granted, it's less heinous, but it I wouldn't necessarily call it "petty."

Posted by Phrasingsmith (Member # 2773) on :

A touching letter...

"DEAR FRIENDS AND FAMILY"
Ivor Van Heerden :: 9.19.05

Editor's Note: Dr. Van Heerden, a hurricane expert at Louisiana State University who has long predicted the disaster caused by Katrina, appeared in the January NOVA scienceNOW segment on hurricanes. He wrote this moving e-mail message to loved ones and friends in the early hours of September 7, 2005.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/dispatches/050919.html

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

I'm simply asserting that most humans don't tend to commit crimes against fellow humans. Atrocities or meanness, the culprits are usually in the minority unless there is some idea that "justice" is being served, in which case it isn't a tendancy to criminality that is the problem, it is a flawed sense of proportion.

Posted by will-o-wisp (Member # 2416) on :

Hey i happen to live near Baton Rouge, about two hours or so from New Orleans. As a whole, Hurricane Katrina really restored my faith in humanity as a whole. I found that I was most frightened and emotionally involved when I found that Hurricane Katrina was about to hit New Orleans-I was really scared. When it actually hit i was too busy worrying about not having power and air-conditioning. BUt I was giggling and feeling really warm and smiling all day when i went to CNN.com and saw all the foreign countries that are sending us money and offering sympathy. This is just such a powerful image to me--no matter how much the media tries to tell us that everyone hates us, foreign countries are composed of human beings that relate to other human beings and want to help and be helped. Forget politics and economics. THis is the stuff that makes up stories.

Posted by keldon02 (Member # 2398) on :

"I'm simply asserting that most humans don't tend to commit crimes against fellow humans."

I believe that statement to be true. Most of us tend to band together into communities and create rules to live by. For instance in the mining towns of the American west in the 1800's there was actually rule of law by citizens' committees to the point that most of these rough and ready miners could proudly say that their crime rates were less than cities like New York and Chicago. Our impression of the western frontier as being lawless has been shaped more by movies than by history. Likewise our impression that the great cities are peaceful has been shaped by fiction and romance instead of hard fact.

Once all is examined I think we will see what happened in New Orleans was the result of a big congregation of what is a tiny minority in smaller towns. The people who committed the rapes and murders in that city were the same ones who had been living in ignorance and sloth before the storm. Their victims had been living in poverty and mental illness, unable to defend themselves without help. It seems that cities tolerate the former and ignore the latter more than rural areas.

[This message has been edited by keldon02 (edited September 22, 2005).]

Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :

Christine: The incident that I was thnking about was the group who were looting from the jewelry store and then opened fire on the search helecopters because they wanted to get away with the loot. That's a far different situation than looting a grocery store for a can of peas to feed the kids.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

I'm going to arbitrarily change sides now, and say that most human societies are inherently criminal to some degree, whether or not the individual humans living in them have independent criminal tendencies. Like I said earlier, "a flawed sense of proportion" can lead a majority to commit acts that serve the narrowest interests of their own community without any consideration for those outside their community.

This is different from individual human criminality, insofar as the crimes committed are really for the sake of a community rather than for the criminal's own interests. Sometimes a criminal will try to pass of crimes as being in the service of a larger community, such as family or a gang. Often this is a transparent deception, only the criminal really believes those actions are for the "good" of anyone else. But sometimes, particularly when the criminal is defending what would normally be seen as a "common good" of that community, the line is pretty blurry.

That is because often the "common good" of one community involves a crime against those outside the community. Not always, in truth there is such a thing as a common good for all. But most human societies resort very frequently to commiting crimes against anyone that doesn't belong to that particular society. I have long and unfortunate personal experience with this tendancy.

To the extent that humans will willingly join and defend a community that obviously commits crimes against others, all normal humans are highly criminal. It's not like you can't live if you don't join human society (though it is rather limiting). But that sort of "crime" isn't a matter of opportunity. Most humans, if given a completely free choice between two societies, will choose one that is less criminal. It's just that, for humans, that choice is almost never "free". The society tends to choose the individual, when it happens the other way around you have a hero story (or a tragedy, depending on your point of view).

Posted by keldon02 (Member # 2398) on :

Survivor, you could consider the Rwanda massacres from that viewpoint.

[This message has been edited by keldon02 (edited September 23, 2005).]

Posted by Noctivigant (Member # 2843) on :

I'm going to use another's words to voice my opinion:

quote:
I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.
--Sigmund Freud

*I normally just simplify this to "People are bad." It makes it a little less.. heavy.

Writing-related question: What would you think of quotes like this at the beginning of every chapter, like in Dune, except actual statistics, or bits from literature or science?

[This message has been edited by Noctivigant (edited September 24, 2005).]

Posted by Slim Jenkins (Member # 2877) on :

I love well-chosen quotes inserted into fiction (or non-fiction) as headings, personally. Sometimes they're the best things in the book!

Regarding the NO situation, I was imediately reminded of Ballard's 'Drowned World' seeing the footage of the new watery environment. There the similarity ends, though.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

I do regard the Rwanda massacres and most other similar mass crimes (those sanctioned and committed by an entire community), including the various mass crimes I see commited by various groups of Americans, as belonging to the pattern I described, yes.

On the question of quotes, I love it when they are from actual sources, even more so when the sources are reliable and have something meaningful to say about the story I'm reading. My very favorite book, Watership Down uses them extensively.

Posted by keldon02 (Member # 2398) on :

quote:
I normally just simplify this to "People are bad." It makes it a little less.. heavy

That sounds a little like the doctrine of original sin. Much of fiction seems to explore those depths as well as the heights to which we pitiful creatures can be lifted.

Survivor I had another thought taqngentially related to your ideas. Bear with me a second while I ramble:

There is the possibility such a crime could be done in error or out of kindness as well out of ill will or hatred. Imagine what is happening in NO at this time. Thousands of people have been displaced, moved around the country and given food, shelter, clothing, health care, TV sets.

Some will be helped by these gifts. Perhaps a single mother will be able to afford child care and will be given the opportunity to go to school to become a nurse or teacher. For others the gifts will be neutral. They will exchange one insane asylum or jail for another. But some people will be destroyed, losing their last thread of initiative and personal striving. They will be trapped in an endless cycle of trying to become more and more helpless to 'deserve' the gifts until they deteriorate and lose all hope. They will become like the Savage's mother in "Brave New World", destroyed by kindness.

[This message has been edited by keldon02 (edited September 25, 2005).]

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

No, I have to draw the line at calling simple mistakes crimes. Now, if you do something that you know has bad consequences and you just don't care, that's different. If it has consequences that you could honestly wonder whether they were bad or not, and you decide to call it even, that's not a crime, even if it's a bit careless.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

It seems, at this late date, that the authorities and the media are backing way down on just went on in New Orleans after the hurricane passed. Seems the reports were greatly and grossly exaggerated.