A PRESENT HORROR

The following brief comment is a response to: “The Megacity: Decoding the Chaos of Lagos,” by George Parker, New Yorker, November 13, 2006

Note: George Parker’s first hand reports from Iraq were a model of informative journalism and an adumbration the debacle that we have brought upon ourselves and the Iraqis. His book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq is now in paperback.

I picked up the above titled article while rereading Dante.

Packer’s description of present day Lagos chilled me as much as Dante’s. Contemporary Lagos is indeed hell on earth and Packer’s article is full of descriptions that would not be out of place in Dante’s Inferno.

Worse, however, are the western intellectuals who are now feeding off of Lagos and other megacities without any real on the ground knowledge. A ‘perverse” phenomenon that I wish to note as the problems of a declining America increasingly need the attention and concern that Africa and other parts of the world are now receiving.

Stuart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalogue is quoted as follows: “Squatter cities are vibrant .. each narrow street is one bustling market.” He seems to think that the horrors that Packer describes is a “cure for third world poverty and an extraordinary profit making opportunity.,” [Packer’s worlds].

I found Brand’s enthusiasm ridiculous in light of Packer’s description from the actual experience of Lagos.

Rem Koolhaas, a leading designer/architect is worse: he and his team were so intimidated by Lagos that they were afraid to leave their car on their first visit. They then rented the president’s helicopter. Things obviously looked better from the air:

“From the air, the apparently burning garbage head turned out to be, in fact, a village, an urban phenomenon with a highly organized community living on it s crust...what seemed from above an accumulation of dysfunctional movements, seemed from above an impressive performance, evidence of how well Lagos might perform if it were the third largest city in the world.” [Rem Koolhaas]

Packer’s comment on this idiocy: “The impulse to look at an “apparently burning garbage heap/’ and see an “urban phenomenon,’ and then make it the raw material of an elaborate aesthetic construct, is not so different from the more common impulse not to look at all.”

An impulse that seems to be rampant in the world as the data from global warming piles up and the wave of destruction that it is ushering in gathers strength.

Think I’m exaggerating; see for yourself.

Google: The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock and then perhaps read the book.