Tsunami

[knip]

like i said, i wasn't trying to be cold...you complained of insomnia, and i tried to help ease it

if i came off cold and callous, that wasn't my intent...i've been to that beach in thailand and enjoyed many evenings talking with folks who are probably dead now

how does anybody make sense of something like this? you cannot, because it makes no sense...

but i'll say that as population rises, so will the deaths from natural disasters...so it's only a matter of time before this particular disaster is eclipsed...

[Doreen Peri]

knip.... yes, i know you were trying to ease the pain and comfort me with words which lightened the load..... and i thank you! i know you weren't trying to be cold.... I'm so sensitive... How indeed do we deal with such tragedies? i don't know... I'm only feeling my way through, and as I said, maybe one death *would* bring me insomnia... I don't know... It's just awful, that's all I know....

I didn't mean for my reply to be read as me taking your post as being cold... truly....

thank you!

we need to treasure every breath and every connection to every breath with every other person on this planet... Life is so very fragile...

I hate to think your statement about population and rising deaths from natural disasters is true but....... it probably is.....

I want to think positive thoughts..... Let's do that, ok? The pouring out of empathy from people all over the world has been tremendous..... It's a surge of beautiful human energy.... I want to embrace it...

as I know you do.

[hester_prynne]

Just for the record Knip ol boy, I didn't have any ill feelings towards your comments either, everything you say is true. Indeed, it happens, we never know when it can happen, yes, with the population it may happen even more often, etc. etc.

But there's more to it than the facts and the veil of distance. There is mystery, and human depth, emotions, stories, tragedy, life and death, miracles if you will, of survival.
There are powerful stirrings of compassion, empathy, fear, love....and wanting very much to help
Do ya feel it?

H

[shamatha1]

Why are we moved so much more to compassionate stirrings by a natural catastrophe as opposed to the many human-made ones?

Why now the outpouring of grief and aid (not just here but across America and the world) when there was a civil war in the Congo that cost 3 million lives in 6 years, and ongoing massacre in Darfur.

Maybe natural disasters allow me grieve purely, without the nagging of a guilty conscience that my indifference or even my actions were responsible for the tragedy. It's beyond my control.

Maybe it's just that. It could happen anywhere, my grief tinged with the fear that it could have been me.

The Congolese, the Sudanese in Darfur; well, I don't have to live there. It's sad that innocents are caught in the crossfire, but it's too distant, to abstract to really feel or care; that couldn't happen here, we're too civilized.

I don't want to see those pictures on the evening news. I might feel a shiver of guilt that I could be doing something to stop it, to help.

I can give my money to tsunami aid and be done with it, knowing that I've done my part, even if in the back of my mind I wonder how many slower burning tragedies are being left to smolder in the rush to pour money and grief onto this one.

Why?

[Doreen Peri]

Hi shamatha -

Call me a blind woman if you want, but I wasn't aware of 3 million lives being lost in 6 years in an ongoing massacre in Darfur. I guess I'm not paying attention? Or what? Now I need to do research. This is appalling! What is this? Genocide? Sure, I knew of war in the Congo, but I've never heard of such an astronomical figure!

Is it me? Am I not listening well enough? Or is the news not being reported accurately? Or both?

I'm no more compassionate to natural catastrophes than to human-made ones. There have been over 150,000 civilian lives lost in Iraq (and that figure was quoted several months ago, so I'm sure it's many more now.) And this is pure and simple murder. By the hands of my country's military forces.

I'm appalled at this. Throughout the past year, I've been in emotional turmoil about this.

How do we stop it? What can we do?

No, the natural disasters are not any more or less important than the human-made tragedies.

All lives are important. It's all important.

[shamatha1]

Well, the massacre in Darfur, Sudan is *only* 70,000 so far. But 3-4 million dead since 1998 is the commonly quoted figure I see for the Congolese Civil War, those dying from violence, disease and famine.

I am not meaning to attack anyone. I am just more of the knip school of thought, that you can't tear yourself up too badly, because tragedy is everywhere every day, and unless you are a god or the God, there's is very little you can do about most of it.

I guess you could sell your possessions and live the life of Mother Theresa, helping the less fortunate, or lead an armed revolution against the govt, though I'm not sure more violence is the answer to violence.

But really, one needs to grieve and then let go, and then do something, whatever is within your capabilities. Beyond its use as a catalyst for compassion, grief is a useless emotion and even a harmful one if it turns into an indulgent self-absorbtion that leads to inaction.

There's nothing wrong with grieving over such a tragedy (not that anyone needs my permission) and it would be creepy if a person did not feel some sadness.

But again, I wonder where the compassion is for the daily tragedies. I, like many people, opened my wallet for the victims, but it led me to wonder why I had not done it sooner for the Congolese or the Sudanese or the poor and homeless right here in America. And there are many people like me.

Why?

[mtmynd]

My best shot at your question, Shamatha is that we have no one to lay the finger of blame on natural disasters, but those tragedies that have been committed by man always have someone to blame, whether it is one man, one nation, one cause or religion... it is "we", mankind, that causes the wars and the aftermath, which in turn causes a great deal of frustration for many towards mankind in general.

[hester_prynne]

Indeed, I live in a general state of being aware that every minute involves tragedy of some sort. A benign sort of accepting awareness. Definately an inaction/apathy motivator if I think of nothing else but tragedy. It can certainly lead to paranoia. I think Cec is right about the blame thing. I often feel to blame myself, but it's like I have to accept that too. What can I do about it? What can I do about it when trillions of people on this planet seem to forget that we are but travelers passing through? (Having lapsed, perhaps, on friendly hellos and loving so longs).

There's a different connection to the tsunami, at a different level.
Nature stirring up Nature. The earth shifting. That's that.
I dunno. I'm just sorting out the affect. There's awe, and humbleness, compassion, empathy, roses,..........
fragile life......

H

[abcrystcats]

"Certain indeed is death for the born and certain is birth for the dead; therefore, over the inevitable you should not grieve."

Bhagavad Gita



It helps to understand that there are some things we cannot help. The people swept away by the tsunami are simply gone. There was nothing that could be done to prevent it. Perhaps their deaths are part of a larger plan, I do not know.

Two responses are appropriate, to my way of thinking. You can respond to a tragedy by going to help, and giving everything you can spare to aid the unfortunate. Or you can use the incident as a way to sharpen your appreciation for the beauty and sacredness of your own life.

Nature did this; not men. Nature will do more. Death and disaster are totally normal parts of this cycle of birth and rebirth.

Cecil, I think we are far too selfish to truly DO anything about human suffering. The suffering humans cause is completely preventable. That is why we do little to stop it.

I can't help thinking that the overwhelming charitable response after a natural disaster is a kind of capitulation to the gods. We can't help the force of the tsunami, but it goes through our minds: what if next time it's me? So, to forestall that eventuality, we give and give. It's a kind of sacrifice on the altar of nature.

As for the comment about drinking -- heh heh heh ... I have a close friend who happened to be in South India, in the very path of this thing, when it happened. I haven't heard from him at all, so I have been trolling all the Indian websites searching for as much information as I can get about the area he's visiting. I stumbled upon a funny comment on a South Indian website telling how the New Year's celebrations were cancelled due to the disaster, but liquor sales for the holiday experienced a "record high."

[knip]

I can't help thinking that the overwhelming charitable response after a natural disaster is a kind of capitulation to the gods.

kind of defeats the good intentions of many...i don't buy it