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The strong and rough howling winds of the tropical typhoon Santi roused me from my sleep at 3 a.m. The nearby trees groaned as the heavy rains and winds slapped their branches like a naughty child playing and snapping brittle twigs. The galvanized sheets of the roof rattled constantly in a cacophony with the slamming and banging of doors and windows. In a flash, all the streetlights went out and everything became pitch black!
I was paralyzed by these sounds in bed. My heart's pace increased as I recalled the tragic and devastating effects of the previous typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng. "How high will the water level rise?" "Will I get stuck again?" "How many people will die in this typhoon?" My imagination could not help add: "The nearby trees might crash on the roof and pin you down in bed [FOREVER!]" or "The cars outside might get hit by falling branches and debris..." and so on.
Never in my life, and I imagine in the lives of so many who have witnessed the effects of recent storms, have I been so affected, suspicious and frightful of the slightest changes in weather conditions: a cloudy day with isolated rain showers, a sudden unexpected downpour and occasional lighting and thunderstorms. Now my fears are immediately heightened – mostly by my imagination – when the weather station announces any impending tropical depression, even though how insignificant it may be.
The aftermath of every disaster, however, brings with it something positive. The recent typhoons and their effects have helped us to face reality more prepared after seeing how "bad things can be" [perhaps] after not heeding past warnings to prevent similar calamities. The event may also [finally] "force" us to put into action – wrestling both political and social wills – to repair the present damage and build in view of avoiding something similar in the future.
Properly speaking nature has and considers no calamities. It simply behaves as it should. Disasters only happen to man who happens to be in nature's way. Very often, however, because of man's irresponsibility (i.e. arbitrary cutting down of trees, mining, and bad habits that pollute the land, rivers, sea and air), when he greedily tries to "train" nature – which abhors straight lines – then nature gets back at man. But the real and deeper calamity happens when man does not abide with the nature and purpose intended for him by God. And this can be more troublesome and destructive than any typhoon or earthquake.
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As we are just learning to cope with the devastation left by two major typhoons (and probably more to come), we may be overlooking the rise of a more sinister storm – a moral one – looming in the horizon. This is the storm being brewed by legislators (ironically, claiming to serve the country's common good) when they decide upon laws that are morally contrary to man's dignity and end. They may be materially concerned in alleviating those suffering from the recent typhoons, but they are either too short-sighted to see the moral scourge they are about to unleash upon our people.
Proponents of laws claiming to improve a person's health – sadly, restrictedly tailored only to the reproductive idea of health – and to curb the population of our nation have only to learn from other countries. They will realize – in fact, they are aware since these are glaring and known facts – that nations who have "successfully" imposed similar bills to promote population control and reproductive health, are now sinking in a murky deluge of social and economic problems (e.g. demographic imbalance, economic woes due to lack of a sufficient work force, even the high incidence of AIDs, etc.)
Why can't they see this? Are they only addressing an immediate, personal and limited good at the expense of the future of the common good? When will they learn that attempting to "tweak" man's nature through selfishly tailored ends only endangers man himself?
This is blind attitude of theirs is actually the perfect storm created for our moral and social devastation. It will utterly shatter society's basic nucleus – the family – and scatter to an irreparable state our most cherished traditional values. Finally, it will lead to the depersonalization of man's spiritual dignity as it is violently emptied by the absolute materialistic concerns of legislators. All this naturally spells our destruction with a perfect storm.
