I have been thinking about the huge outpouring of compassion and care that we are all showing over the tsunami devastation. I mean, we are watching hour after hour of news footage, digging deep and donating (or at least "pledging") money (in excess of $100million so far) to our favorite aid agencies, and talking about how "awful" it all is. And tonight, in a Australian first, all three commercial television networks will hold hands and broadcast an aid concert and telethon. The performers will look good, the television networks will look good, the advertisers will look good an no doubt we'll all feel really good about it all (from the comfort of our lounge chairs). Me included.
Why such an outpouring of emotion? What has caused it? Why is it continuing at such an unprecedented rate? It's not like the December 26 tsunami was the world's worst ever natural disaster, in terms of statistics anyway. Other earthquakes have killed many people; Tangshan (1976, 650 000),Tokyo (1923, 140 000), an even Iran has lost 75 000 people due to recent earthquakes (1990 and 2003). And of course there was an cyclone that killed about 500 000 people in Bangladesh in 1970.
I think two key elements have caused what is happening at the moment; the first helped to light our compassionate fires and the second is continuing to fan the flames.
What makes this tsunami special and different from those I listed above is the geographical extent of the devastation and the number of poor countries affected. These countries were (are) also popular resort destinations favoured by tourists from rich western countries and wealthy Asians from the north-east. This has helped to give the horrors of the disaster much more prominence than they would have otherwise, or if they had occurred in a single country. It's a selfish distortion, but it is a real distortion, and it was exploited to help kick of the biggest aid donation exercise in history.
And then the whole thing just snow-balled. We heard about all the generosity out there, and we all wanted in on the giving, we wanted to give more than our neighbours. Call it Conspicuous Compassion; "showing that we care is about feeling good, not doing good, and illustrates not how altruistic we have become, but how selfish."
Patrick West had a shot at the concept of conspicuous compassion this week, but did have this to say with respect to the tsunami:
"A consequence of one of the worst natural disasters in human history has been to initiate one of the most conspicuous bouts of compassion that the Western-style democracies have ever seen. National governments give the impression of attempting to outbid one another in funds committed to disaster relief. Independent of this, citizens seem to be donating generously to international charitable organisations. There have also been calls for manifestations of public empathy."
But just how much good are we all doing, and what exactly is our motivation for wanting to do good; even The Age seemed skeptical about what is going on:
"First came water, then compassion. But the new wave threatening to swamp the tsunami-affected nations of Asia is aid. Australia late on Thursday gazumped other donors by pledging $1 billion, comprising $500 million in cash and the balance in program-based aid stretching over several years. An hour earlier, Germany had trumped Japan's $643 million commitment by upping its contribution to $867 million. Globally, the total promised is already around $5 billion.
“There is no question global politics is at play here, at least in some quarters…”
Not only global politics, but neighbourhood and workplace politics. The longer this goes on, the more convinced I become that many people are donating for no other reason that to make themselves feel good, or to keep ahead of the Jones'.
(And I was just reminded (via Tom) each month (!!) more people die of AIDS (240,000) and Malaria (165,000) than did in the tsunami. (Another 140K ... PER MONTH ... die of diarrhea)) Think about it.
Comments