In recent days, there has been a lot of rain in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the embankments of Dongting Lake have also been washed away by floods.
For those who have never experienced a flood, it is difficult to imagine the horror of floods. This time, the breach of Dongting Lake is estimated to have caused loss of life.
Watching the news, three men supported a pregnant woman with cloth in water over 2 meters deep, preventing her from falling into the deep water, and persisted for about 3 hours. Fortunately, when they were about to give up hope, they were rescued by rescue personnel. Hopefully, others will also have such luck.
In the autumn two years ago, Dongting Lake cracked due to drought. And with the recent heavy rains, the dam of Dongting Lake has been washed away. After experiencing a drought, people may neglect water conservancy; and after a drought, experiencing a flood makes it easier for embankments to collapse. Hopefully, Dongting Lake in autumn this year will not experience drought or anomalies.
We have invested a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources in water conservancy construction or facilities, but the results are not ideal. For example, water conservancy facilities may not provide effective water resources during droughts, and may not serve the purpose of flood control during the rainy season, but instead release floodwaters during heavy rains, such as in the Nanyang area with heavy rains and large reservoirs releasing floodwaters.
There have always been two opposing views on whether to build reservoirs: one view believes that building reservoirs goes against the natural laws of water resources; while the other view believes that we have the confidence to master water resources and other related natural laws such as geography and geology, and the conditions are ripe for building reservoirs. Stories like the flood control efforts of Yu the Great provide good precedents, showing human ingenuity in dealing with floods and modifying waterways. However, many reservoirs today seem to be more about interception and diversion, forgetting the ingenuity and forcibly altering the environmental conditions of water resources.
In the balance between long-term stability and immediate interests, people often choose short-term benefits over long-term solutions, such as establishing a stable water conservancy system and plan that conforms to natural laws.
From this, I suddenly realized that we are good at forgetting. Hegel believed that human society often repeats similar mistakes and conflicts before reaching a higher level of self-consciousness, summarized as: the lesson people draw from history is that they never learn from history.
I hope that we can reach a higher level of self-consciousness, learn from history, and become enlightened; in this era where everyone is in danger and it is difficult to protect oneself, having a sense of crisis may help us protect ourselves.
Original text available at: Gengdu Blog.