Upheavals - where are the heroes?

Daylight savings time today - we all want the night to not fall too soon, for the darkness not to come at all; there is too much darkness encircling the world at this time. Libya and Gaddafi - vilified and laughed at in comic costumes for years; slamming the democracy rebels against the blooded walls as NATO, and stale democracies look on impotent, likely having supplied weapons to both sides.

Japanese ocean and earth tossed into jumbled chaos by nothing less than a force of a slipped fault after so many years of stress and pressure in the northern province of Sentai. Thousands will die or have already died. Tsunami, fire, rock, hypothermia, exposure, radiation from leaking nuclear plants, all of it will take the toll in terms of this tragedy. Volcanos in southern Japan are awake and erupting.

Less than a month ago, an earthquake threw Christchurch New Zealand into a panic; this was the second quake in less than one year. Pakistan had the horrible flood in September; a tremendous volcanic explosion in Java in October caused an evacuation of 350,000; Chile had an earthquake in March 2010 and of course the Haitian quake in January 2010.

Someone remarked yesterday they were beginning to believe in Nostradumas - the last days are approaching! O - I think not. Upheavals have always occurred; it's just that with social media and instant news services, we now know about each literal earth shattering event the moment it occurs. One hundred years ago, it took weeks for the news service to deliver disaster news to the other side of the world.

I don't say its better now than then. We are just hit globally continuously with all the news, all the time, 24/7/365. There is no time to reflect, summon compassion, take action in one direction effectively before another enormous disaster falls upon humanity. We feel like a boxer in the ring - events v humanity. The global events are definitely getting their low blows in, over and over again. Because events do not play by any rules - no Marquis of Queensbury rules of the ring for disasters. One sucker punch can be handled but a shower of unfair punches in a rapid succession is difficult to bounce back from.

And who is the referee in the ring? We cannot count on the global organizations - NATO, IMF, OPEC, United Nations, OAS, etc. No one has any clout anymore. They are all burned out, tapped out, leaderless, wimped out, politically incoherent, or just not interested. What is in it for them? is the popular question for any of those agencies... self interest will defeat the human response to disaster anytime.

And who will rise above the defeat question? Who will become humanity's champion? The people who have demonstrated such leadership come from odd origins: Sean Penn, Angelina Jolie, Stephen Lewis, Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandala, Karen Armstrong, Matt Damon and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for example. And we each can be heroes too. God is in each of us to not ask, "what is in for me?" but to give our best. To share the rest. To say prayers to whatever spirit for good you hold true and to pay attention, stay awake and keep the darkness at bay.