It's difficult to concentrate on other matters these days, given the horror in Japan. This is very like the days after Katrina struck the Mississippi coast and flooded New Orleans for many of us; a kind of shock has set in that forces us to spend hours staring at images on TV, images too awful to fully process.
In the wake of this kind of overwhelming disaster, people ask themselves what they might do. Millions of people with little financial margin in their own life send checks of $25 or less in the hope it might make a difference to one of those people in Japan now homeless, hungry, thirsty, hurt, or bereft of the comfort of family and friends who have now gone missing.
My heart goes out especially to those who seek to find their loved ones, because I know that their chances of success, statistically, are zero. Once that awful silence of the departed replaces what they would have found a way -- at any cost -- to do, which of course is to make contact with you, you know deep inside that they are gone.
Part of our DNA has saddled us with denial at times like these. We refuse to accept the worst, even as we know the worst has occurred. Like other intelligent beings -- elephants, whales, dolphins -- we weep and mourn our loss but, perhaps uniquely human, we maintain an unrealistic sense of hope as well.
I've witnessed it over and over, particularly as a reporter forced to talk to people in their moment of greatest pain. I'll never forget their faces, their eyes, their expressions, their ineffable yearning for an alternative outcome.
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3 comments:
If I had to face a natural disaster like the one that happened in Japan, I would rather be in Japan (where they act as they "ought" to act) than in any other countries I had lived before(Malaysia, Kenya, the Sudan, Nepal etc.), because I know that there I would not have to worry about being mugged or raped during a blackout at night on the street of disaster areas, in addition to enduring the hardships from the disaster itself. I am not sure how people would handle a similar situation in my new country that I call home now, either. When it comes to the negative population growth, highly expressive Italians are worrying about their becoming extinct from the face of the earth, too, because their women don't want to have too many babies any more. So, that may be a different problem all together(?) S.
I do not mean to be dismissive of the positive aspects of Japanese culture. However, if anything, I have been much too positive over the years about the Japanese, I now feel. There are huge costs of repressing feelings -- great damage is done, innocent people get badly hurt, and a sort of collective insanity prevails. I agree that everyone can feel safe in Japan, especially women, though perhaps not young girls, who continue to be exploited, molested, and fetishized by Japan's male-centric power structure. Unlike most developed countries, women have no power in Japan, there are no CEOs, no political leaders, and precious few intellectual leaders. My main point is that it is time for the Japanese to express emotions openly both in their private and public lives. Silence, in this case, is hardly golden.
Words are so futile at times like this.
As for people and how they react or act during a crisis- no matter which country someone is in- there is the good and there is the bad.
A quote taken from an article I read today:
"I saw the ugly side of people and then I saw the good side, " he said, "Some people thought only of themselves, others stopped to help." (a quote by a man named Mr. Saga who was right there in the middle of the Tsunami.)
It is in each crisis that our true nature is exposed and in every country or culture or person there is the good and there is the bad.
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