Earthquakes essential to Californians’ self-esteem

Here is one big lie Californians tell ourselves: We hate earthquakes.

The unspoken truth is that we love earthquakes, as well we should. Don’t give the weather all the credit. Earthquakes are another natural phenomenon that made California great. Earthquakes play as many roles here as our finest Hollywood actors. Quakes inspire us to dream, ground us, shape our culture and bind us together.

We would be on very shaky ground without them.

Earthquakes have a reputation for destruction, but here they’ve often been a force for construction and progress. The disastrous 1933 Long Beach earthquake inspired new building standards that made modern Southern California possible. After the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, the corrupt city’s crooks were put on trial, and the place was rebuilt into the beautiful city we know today. By 1911, the people who rebuilt San Francisco had taken over the entire state, establishing the infrastructure, progressive policies and democratic tools (like the ballot initiative) that still define California’s public life.

While the modern American economy is famously unequal — benefits go to the richest, while the costs are borne by us all — the economics of earthquakes work more progressively. The damage and death tend to be limited to relatively small numbers of people and places, but the benefits of the money spent on post-quake repairs are widely distributed.

Even in bad times, the feds eagerly throw money at our state after earthquakes. Why? Because earthquakes can’t be blamed on the usual American scapegoats — the media, poor people, gays, immigrants. Fault movement is nobody’s fault.

At the same time, earthquakes are essential to Californians’ self-esteem — our sense of ourselves as a people apart, able to survive anything. We proudly reside on moving ground where others dare not — and this has given us the courage to live as we wish and speak our minds.

Of course, many other places around the world — from Japan to Italy, China to Mexico, Turkey to Indonesia — can experience earthquakes even bigger and more damaging than ours. But California stands out for having built its culture on the earthquake, quite literally. In describing the standard motion picture, Samuel Goldwyn once declared: “We want a story that starts with an earthquake and builds up to a climax.”

Earthquakes are often described, incorrectly, as a California curse, a fly in the Golden State soup, the dark side of a place that is otherwise sunny and bright. To the contrary, the sudden earth-shifting of quakes is essential to California’s appeal — the sense that here, everything can change in seconds.

Our state’s great 20th century chronicler, Carey McWilliams, wrote that “the state is always off balance, stretching itself precariously” and possessing a “notorious lack of social and political equilibrium.” Our shaking makes us special, he wrote: “California is no ordinary state. It is an anomaly, a freak, the great exception.”

While earthquakes reflect our unsteadiness, they also can keep us relatively sober. The idea of the “Big One” — the massive earthquake around the corner — has moved generations of Californians, a “live-in-the-moment” lot, to make emergency plans, reinforce infrastructure and bolt our homes to their foundations. We Californians could be better prepared. But, without the prospect of big earthquakes, would our feet ever touch the ground?

Indeed, the recent quakes near Ridgecrest provided reminders that Californians are buoyed rather than chastened by quakes. At Dodger Stadium, when the upper deck swayed, people applauded, as if this were just another ride in Theme Park California. The game continued without interruption.

More devastating quakes have shaken us more thoroughly, and to great action. Of course, we shouldn’t see earthquakes as solutions for our problems. But we ought to be grateful for them. Californians’ lives are full of disorienting change. Our neighbors may move away, and our families may leave. But earthquakes, like the most loyal of friends, always come back to visit.