Acts of God?

Anticipating Future Strategic Triple Whammies (Part #4)

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In the case of a single whammy disaster, as with the recent flooding in parts of Australia, every effort is made to "hide behind God" -- whose manifestations are technically defined by the insurance industry as Acts of God. These are events defined legally as being outside of human control, for which no one (other than God) can be held responsible -- pace Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion, 2006). This situation has been variously exemplified by lawsuits against God -- in reality and in fiction. To the extent that a "whammy" is held to have supernaturally evil connotations, it might well be understood as the singular act of a malevolent deity.

Within the Japanese culture related implications may be considered. The Shinto religion accords special importance to the subtler forces of nature of which natural disasters are a manifestation. The disaster of March 2011 might then be interpreted as a combination of such subtle forces -- of Earth (in the case of the earthquakes), of Water (in the case of the tsunami), of Fire (in the case of the reactor explosions), and of Air (in the case of airborne dissemination of radioactivity). Framed in this way it could be considered a fourfold whammy.

Of potential significance, in the absence of a single deity within the Shinto framework, is whether the disaster is necessarily to be recognized as an "Act of Kami" -- the kami being the spirits and natural forces essential within the Shinto worldview. As with the role played by feng shui in siting buildings within Chinese cultures, notably where importance is attached to commercial success. This might highlight the importance of other factors in siting nuclear reactors (Tom Mitchell, An ancient route to office harmony, Financial Times, 15 December 2007). Would a specialist in feng shui recommend siting a reactor on a seismic fault line? Whilst those working heroically with the reactors to ward off meltdown can be recognized as imbued with the best of the "kamikaze" spirit, it might be asked whether siting the reactors on fault lines should be understood as a "kamikaze strategy" in its most problematic sense.

However, just as with the responses of other religions to "Acts of God", how the Shinto religion and its adherents will frame that disaster from a supernatural perspective remains to be seen. The question in both cases is how religion anticipates any crisis of crises -- potentially in fulfillment of prophecy (Spontaneous Initiation of Armageddon -- a heartfelt response to systemic negligence, 2004; Acts of God vs Acts of al-Qaida: Hurricane Katrina as a message to Bible Belt America? 2005).

Within the framework of Christian religious "end times" prophecy, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse -- Conquest/Pestilence, War, Famine and Death -- could be understood as a "fourfold whammy". In countries in which politics is imbued with religious considerations, as notably with the USA and Europe (to some degree), how does strategic planning take account of such dimensions or -- having failed to do so -- with religious framing of failure to do so?

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