"CNN has confirmed that the undersea earthquake off Sumatra and the giant waves it triggered killed at least 159,487 people." --as of January 13, 2005
"JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- The Indonesian Health Ministry said Wednesday that the December 26 earthquake and tsunami killed 166,320 people in Indonesia, jumping the regional death toll for the disaster to 212,611." --as of January 19, 2005
Some things are absolutely unfathomable to me. I try to consider them in comparison to other things. On September 11, 2001, 3500 Americans died in the terrorist attacks. Remember the national mourning then? I went to a university of 2700 undergraduates, and 1500 grad students. Comparably speaking, that's equivalent to almost our entire student body.
The tsunami killed over 160,000 people. I can't even fathom that amount of life and death. It's like the entire population of Providence, Rhode Island. The entire world seems to be in a state of mourning. Even when the death toll was only around 50,000, there was so much talk about the incredible loss of life.
On the other hand, over 100,000 Iraqis have died since the United States started our war over there. And that number is over two months old, so is surely a conservative estimate. In the US, most people don't even know that number. Sure, it's a war, but that doesn't change the fact that it's an incredible loss of life, and much of it is civilian deaths.
Isn't it crazy how our perceptions and emotions are manipulated? Even on such a somber topic as massive loss of life, it is crazy to me how we can be persuaded to think one thing or another. I don't mean to be such a cynic, but have you noticed the images we see on the news? American media had almost none from Iraq, but from the Tsunami we see bodies floating and children in the midst of destruction.
As for me, I'm sobered by it all. I want to see the pictures from both Iraq and the Tsunami, because it reminds me of what is out there. I don't want to be a numb, rich, American lug. For me, seeing images of such suffering brings devastating humility and shame at my own self-centeredness and self-absorption. Seeing what life is like there reminds us that the war in Iraq is not a political fight in America, but involves so much life and catastrophe of so many people. It reminds me that the Tsunami is not about a contest of who donates most, but a race against time to save as many lives as possible, and to salvage the spirit of so many others. Images remind us that these things are not abstractions, but involve human lives like our own.
I'm reading a book by Gordon Allport called The Nature of Prejudice for a sociology class. It's a classic from he 1950s. In one chapter he has a little diagram that is a bunch of concentric circles, each representing a group we affiliate with. The smallest circle is the family. It's followed by the larger and larger groups with affiliate with, such as our circle of friends, our school, our city, our state, our region, our political party, our nation, our linguistic group. The biggest circle is "humanity". Allport talks about how the smaller a group is, the easier it is to be a strong in-group. He says that it's possible for "humanity" to constitute an in-group, but it is the hardest to get any solidarity for, because it's so big. I think this is unfortunate, because in many ways it's quite desirable for "humanity" to be our in-group. I mean, let's be cliche: that's how we'll achieve world understanding or world peace or whatever.
Suffering defines life in so much of the world, and I know zero of the real suffering the people in Iraq and Asia are experiencing now. I want to see the suffering that my fellow humans are in the midst of. Logistically speaking, I can't talk to these people or offer them any kind of direct aid. The least I can do as their fellow person is see and know about a tiny bit of what they are going through. For some reason seeing others' suffering is one way I feel the slightest bit involved with their lives and the slightest bit like humanity is my in-group.
(I just did a search and apparently I'm not the only one thinking about this. Here's one aticle from Australia.)
2 comments:
what the hell. I commented on this on Wednesday morning and it isn't here. did you remove it or is blogger retarded? Too tired to repost. My dad is in town and I'm going to go have dinner with him now that I'm up from my nap (sooo long that I missed webc!) Love and miss you, dear friend.
What I'm curious about, is our reaction to the numbers. There's seems to be a threshold at which something becomes a tragedy for humanity. If we hear about something dying in a car accident on the local news, we don't blink an eye. People die every day, but when THAT MANY PEOPLE die in ONE day, we look to God and ask, "How could you let this happen?" We react to the death of a single stranger as tragic for their family, but the deaths of thousands becomes a tragedy for all of us. I'm not really sure I have a point, but I was wondering what made us as humans feel that way. Can sheer numbers make us feel that humanity is our in-group?
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