In the light of news that much of central Europe is flooding, the reports of the annual flooding of rivers here in America raises the question; do we have the right to do irrational things? Whether we have the right or not, people do irrational things.

I have a farewell phrase I call out as I leave the hot pool in Parkway Hospital.  It is directed to our aquacise leader, Michael, who reminds us that he will see us next time if God is willing and he loves us all, even me.  I tell him that he ranks high in our esteem and “if the rivers don’t rise and the doctors don’t have appointments, we’ll see him next time.”  The “if rivers don’t rise” theme is not an idle one.

Rivers flood.  That is as old as snows returning each year to mountaintops where it melts each spring to produce rivers that rise and flood. Yet each year we hear lamentations about the flooding that occurs either from the spring ritual or the tropical storms and hurricanes that visit our southern and coastal shores. People driven out by floods return each time for not many can afford to just leave their damaged houses behind and go elsewhere. Some irrationally decide to stay and wait until the next flood.

Human populations have chosen to live in marginal areas because earlier people got to take the high ground.  The low-landers had to settle for what was available and a lot of this land was swamp. It had poor drainage out to the sea and was a breeding ground for all kinds of diseases, insect borne and otherwise, waiting to inhabit human carcasses.

Having the “RIGHT” to make irrational choices or not is irrelevant.  We make them all the time. It should surprise no one that after heavy rains that the riverbeds and canals we have connected to them overflow with regularity.  But we are always surprised and each time the signals are there our folk who live there pay the price. They either have not learned or cannot respond in a timely fashion to get out of the way.

We do other irrational things because we are human.  Our overrated brain power fails us in a lot of ways.  I notice that we killed off the railroads because we wanted to drive automobiles anywhere we could build new roadways.  When the planes crashed into our monuments on September 11, 2001 we irrationally decided that we would not take plane rides and turned to cars once again and to the railroads which predictably could not handle the bounty that came their way.

We, here in America, have had decisions made for us (can I say irrationally?) to go to war against a far off country, Iraq.  Have the Osama bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s of the world been irrational when they made war on Israel and the U.S.? I guess we “humans” have the right to do any irrational thing we want.