Obligatory Tsunami Entry

2005-01-07 - 2:19 p.m.

I have some mixed feelings about the whole tsunami thing. In general, I feel terrible for the people who've had to suffer from it, and I hope they get as much help as they need. I'm thankful for all of the people who have given their support, either financially or by actually going there to help rebuild and console.

But on one level it's frustrating. It's frustrating that the earth needs to move and entire towns be eaten by the sea before people will start to care about other people.

The last number I heard was that 160,000 people have died as a result of the wave, which is definitely not an insignificant number, and millions more will have to face disease, starvation, and more before things return to normal. Celebrities are giving millions, even businesses are donating huge amounts of money. Great.

But since the war in Iraq began, some estimates say that 100,000 people have died. Millions in that country face similar problems of no access to drinkable water or food, medical supplies, the basics of life, and they're still being bombed.

A month ago, the news was talking about the greatest humanitarian crisis in the history of the world that is developing in (I think) the Sudan, where, again, millions face death every day, and have been for a long time because of no water, no food, and people shooting at them.

In China and India, AIDS is making their already unbearable problems even worse, Africa has countries spilling over with diamonds but that can't even feed themselves, South America is torn by civil wars and poverty everywhere.

There wasn't this giant, sudden support for any of those crises. There weren't movie stars tripping over themselves for photo ops or week-long specials on talk shows for them, and once everyone in the non-Tsumanied world has forgotten about this tragedy, all of those problems will still exist, and millions will have died, billions will have suffered lives of malnutrition and plague, fear and persecution.

I applaud the efforts made to help the people affected by the wave, but I'm left wondering why it takes a force of nature, something we can't really predict or prevent, something that we had no control over and have no responsibility for, to stir people to compassion. How come the disasters that we created ourselves, the messes that we made and have the power to clean up, get ignored? Are we ashamed? Or just callous?

Maybe I've become too much of a cynic, because it's hard for me to feel warm and gooey when people talk about the aid being given to help some people when other people who will be just as dead next week get nothing.

Cheers,

The Magus

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