Thursday 17 March 2011
Deep Thoughts, by Doug Plumer
So, like probably just about everyone else in the world, I have been simultaneously transfixed and horrified by events in Japan. I don't honestly know how anyone with the remotest sense of humanity could look at that and not be utterly appalled. I've wondered though, in all this, about the idea of, for lack of a better term, variable sympathy. Some huge number of Japanese have died, in terrible circumstances. Quite a larger number of Haitians died, or people around the rim of the Indian Ocean. Yes, we were transfixed and felt terrible, but was it to the same degree as with the Japanese? Is it easier to identify with the suffering of a country not considered 'Third World'? Granted, there seems to be a lot more video footage and photography from Japan then there was from Port au Prince - not so surprising, given the Japanese proclivity for taking pictures, which makes it easier to identify with people's suffering. Is that the only difference, or is it that it is somehow more horrifying for a developed country to suffer a catastrophe than it is somewhere like Haiti, which is, really, one big long continuous catastrophe? I mean, I do it as well. I wonder, also, what would the opinion have been if this had happened in 1942? Would the US and UK have come up with some crapass statement about how this was divine punishment, good for the war effort, blah blah whatever? Countless thousands of Iraqis have died, for example, but we're not too worried about that, not really. Anyway - it's just interesting, I guess. But yeah, it's pretty damn horrifying, and I imagine that being California sometime, or the East Coast when Las Palmas in the Canaries collapses. Ugh. Think I need to go to bed - getting myself worked up...
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2 comments:
Doug, I have wondered the same thing and this is what I decided. When we see horrible things in Haiti or Indonesia we tell ourselves, "Well, their country is backward. Their houses are shabbily constructed, they have no plan." We are better, we think. More prepared. But Katrina happened and we weren't better. Now we see Japan, where the country and the people are so much more organized than we are. The junk strewn around from their destroyed houses is pretty much the same junk we have, and their houses were not shacks. The people aren't looting, they're helping each other. That's very frightening because we know we would be in a lot worse shape than they are. It was interesting to see the response of Australians to their recent floods also. Bus loads of people came from outside the flooded areas to help clean up. People here waited for years for the government to clean up after Katrina. Here in the U.S. many of us have lost the do-it-yourself and help your neighbor attitude. We just expect that spending more money will cure everything. Good post, it made me think. Ouch. Now I'll go back to my mindless work.
Yeah, I'd thought of New Orleans, which was just shameful on all accounts. You could make the excuse that New Orleans has a huge gulf between rich and poor, which it does, which might explain why people would avail themselves of free (...whatever), but it really did seem like people stealing things just for the sake of stealing. It would be one thing if people were stealing food - that's kind of understandable - we need to eat or we die, but stealing TVs, or stealing from each other in such a situation - I just find that beyond reprehensible. It would happen here too though as well, I'm sure, and it certainly happened when I lived in NYC during the blackout, though not as much as you'd think it might have. It does feel though like we've somehow really lost sight of the concept of society, or any form of social contract. But, I wonder what will be the ultimate outcome in Japan, where people's seemingly strong faith in the government is being pretty severely eroded away by incompetence dealing with the nuclear mess, and the basic necessities such as getting food, water and heat to refugees.
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