Our Instant Gratification Society

I left this as a comment to a post on Chase's blog, but feel passionately enough about it that I wanted to put it on my own blog, too:

"The other thing I think needs to be said is that it takes YEARS of planning and practicing and revising plans and practicing more, involving all the key players (including the citizenry)--in other words, constant attention--to make disaster plans work. While mayors and governors should make this kind of thing a priority, it is ridiculous to hold a single administration at any level responsible for the poor response. Officials whose sole responsibility is disaster management are and should be held to a higher standard.

Our nation has not had a commitment to disaster preparedness. How many families have a disaster plan? How many Oklahomans have safe rooms or some other really secure tornado shelter? How many Americans would be able to offer even basic first aid? Ours is a nation with a short memory and little concern for the future. Our citizens don't even save for their own retirement--an inevitable personal disaster absolutely guaranteed to affect them in the most personal way. Many of our citizens who can afford basic health insurance don't buy it, hoping blindly that no medical disaster will befall them.

This goes beyond preparedness for disasters like Katrina, with at least a big part of the problem being our country's inability, as both a government and as individuals, to plan for the future, even when many warnings are sounded. If it isn't pleasant and expedient for the present, we don't want to do it. We don't even want to think about it.

Anybody read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? We are, as a nation, ignoring that most important category of Not Urgent but Important. Add to the list our trade and budget deficits, environmental concerns, poverty in other nations that may destabilize the world, the impact of our foreign policy decisions on future relations with other countries, the poor education level of our children, crumbling infrastructure, etc.

Disaster management is just the very tip of the iceberg."