democracy is so hollow now.

"And I’m really realizing again that, you know, democracy is so hollow now. I mean, we don’t have power. This is not democracy. We are controlled—we have been controlled by the government and the Tokyo Electric Company, you know, a private company. This is a big lesson to be—for us to be humble, in front of a natural—big natural power, power of nature. And we have to really look for a lifestyle and a way of thinking again, to live again with harmony, in harmony with nature."

- Keibo Oiwa, Japanese cultural anthropologist and environmentalist

it has been a morning haunted by morbid thoughts: a squirrel, hit by a car, twitching uncontrollably on the road as cars sped past. just a small death on the corner, easy to ignore. then: a report from the calm voices on npr. the rating of the disaster at fukushima plant raised to level 7-- the same as chernobyl. but only 29 died from chernobyl, npr quotes a japanese official. try 250,000. and if numbers don't properly convey the scope of suffering, read  voices from chernobyl. hear the stories from the people themselves:

"We came home. I took off all the clothes that I'd worn there [Chernobyl plant] and threw them down the trash chute. I gave my cap to my little son. He really wanted it. And he wore it all the time. Two years later they gave him a diagnosis: a tumor in his brain… You can write the rest of this yourself. I don't want to talk anymore."

and i want to scream. i am reminded of another passage of the book about chernobyl that i can only paraphrase. a man was describing the beauty of belarus after the chernobyl explosion -- the glory of the sunshine and the verdant pastures, of men and women tilling the soil, and of children playing in the sand. i imagine a cerulean blue sky and red flowers. but the man goes on to say that this was an illusion: beneath the beauty was poison. the people were oblivious. cancers were already growing.

to me this is a metaphor for how we live today. the leaves are shining outside my window, people are enjoying their morning. they are ironing their shirts, and heading out for the day. while radiation blows across the pacific, while milk in arizona and california turns dangerously toxic, while the basic human rights of a US soldier are violated on US soil, and while the congressional budget makes astronomical cuts to environmental protection, children's healthcare and public education.

but the words of keibo oiwa, a professor from japan, seem to calm me somehow. he is right, democracy is hollow right now. and that feeling of hollowness is universal, global, and transformative, like the japanese earthquake itself, which shifted the earth's axis 6.5 inches and displaced water in my town's local aquifer.   let the earthquakes and the injustice be the "big lesson" that bring a "new way of thinking." is it childish to hope for that?