Man's status as an unwelcome guest on Planet Earth received further confirmation last year, when hurricane Katrina cut a swathe of death and destruction across the southern United States.
No matter how big the bombs we build and however mighty the missiles we manufacture, when it comes to dealing mega-death Mother Nature - also called God - has us all licked.
Rank amateurs we are, depending on big machines and endless quantities of high explosive to achieve our destructive aim; whereas it takes nature a mere minute's tremble to raze cities to the ground or a thirty foot wave travelling across an ocean to kill hundreds of thousands.
The idea that, in addition to all the built-in violence that Earth can throw at us - earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, tropical storms, disease - we feel impelled to add a bit of our own is amazing. With such an array of possibilities for horrible, premature death readily available, why add more?
Also amazing is that Katrina was allowed to do what she did in the first place. Hurricanes are a regular feature in that part of the world and you'd expect that the richest, most technologically advanced nation in the world could have done a bit more than cry "holy shit" and leg it for the hills.
Recovering from the stunning sight of an astronaut repairing a shuttle in space, I'm confronted with the spectacle of obviously substandard housing lying there, ripped to pieces like shoeboxes, old cars floating down the streets, shops being looted and upwards of a thousand people lying dead, creating a serious risk of pestilence.
I'm reminded of an earthquake that hit Japan; a quake that caused minimal damage, in spite of its force. That's because the Japanese have learned to build for earthquakes. What has kept the Americans from constructing, in hurricane-prone areas, buildings that can withstand the likes of Katrina?
The Dutch, after their terrifying experience of the February 1953 storms, made sure that flooding and destruction on that scale would never happen again by creating the greatest storm surge barrier in the world. They called it the Delta project.
You'd think that it wouldn't be beyond the wit of the US authorities to do something similar, but looking at the aerial photographs of southern Mississippi and Louisiana you'd think you were gazing down on Nicaragua or Honduras. A professor at Delft Polytechnic put it this way, "reducing the threat [of hurricanes] should be quite feasible technically. It's simply a matter of investing money."
Since when, in the world's largest economy, was money a problem?
There must be a reason for all this. The population of the stricken region is largely poor and mainly black. Not the kind of people on whose protection you'd spend a lot of money and effort, especially when that money and effort can be spent more profitably elsewhere, such as Iraq.
New Orleans may be one of the great attractions of the Deep South, especially on calm summer days as the black jazz bands can be heard in every club in Basin Street and the Mardi Gras parades move rhythmically down Bourbon Street, but its denizens are expendable.
As for money, cleaning up the mess, restoring the infrastructure, rebuilding what has been destroyed is going to cost America huge amounts of dollars over a very long time. Adequate protection would have been a lot cheaper.
Then, the great and good were falling over themselves to express their horror at the scope of a disaster they did nothing to prevent. "Possibly the greatest natural disaster in our nation's history," the always impeccably briefed George W. Bush called it. George W. Bush, you will recall, spent the start of the New Orleans disaster, at a fund raising event for the US Republican Party.
Louisiana State Governor Kathleen Blanco called the situation 'untenable' and 'heartbreaking' and went on advising people to spend last Wednesday in prayer. "That would be the best thing to calm our spirits and thank our Lord that we are survivors," she said with that arcane logic that comes with deep religious faith, "slowly, gradually, we will recover; we will survive; we will rebuild."
No kidding. How loud a chord her words struck with those still trapped in their homes, or huddled together in the Superdome, or raiding the shelves of shops on Canal Street, or wading through the flooded streets looking for loved ones is hard to say.
I know it's probably unfair to criticize people for saying pointless things in times of crisis, but who wants to be fair? However much I sympathize with the dead, wounded, homeless and destitute of the southern US seaboard, worse has happened in the world. Mayor A Holloway of Biloxi, Mississippi, commented, "this is our tsunami."
No it wasn't. It may be bad, certainly by American standards, but a tsunami it wasn't.
But even that ill-considered claim seems innocuous when compared with the words of Mississippi State Governor Haley Barbour, after a quick fly-over of the inundated region, "it's not a case of homes being severely damaged," he said, "they're just not there. I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago."
Hiroshima, eh? Isn't that the Japanese city that was incinerated by a nuclear bomb in the space of a few seconds, with 120,000 people being charred to a frazzle and many more dying of the effects of radiation in the following years? Strange to think that, from only a few thousand feet up, you can't tell the difference.