We are all undoubtedly aware of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that recently afflicted the small island nation of Haiti. Perhaps 200,000 are dead or missing. Hundreds of thousands suffer from injuries. More than 1,000,000 may be homeless and hungry. The conditions on the island are squalid. Bodies lay in the streets. Garbage is accumulating. Sanitation is nonexistent. This is truly a humanitarian crisis.
The response of the international community has been capacious. So many planes are arriving at the island that some of them aren’t able to land. People are placing their lives on hold in the hope that they can pull survivors from the rubble. Donations continue to flow at breakneck pace. Tragedies such as this bring forth the better angles of our nature and serve as a reminder that cynicism has its limits in the face of hope.
But there’s something strange about this type of event that I can’t quite understand. What exactly is it about the disaster in Haiti that leads us to perceive it as so acute? Is it the 200,000 that may have perished? Is it the innumerable people with no home, no food, and no water? Is it the hundreds of thousands afflicted by injury and unable to receive treatment? Is it the destruction of the cumulative efforts of an impoverished nation? What is the measure of a catastrophe?
If the measure is any of the numbers given above – the death, the starvation, the disease – then this world is never without humanitarian crises. Each day is a calamity of the scale that Haiti is experiencing. Poverty is ubiquitous, disease is omnipresent, starvation is the norm, and death is the rule. Yet we accept all of this as status quo. So many people were moved to do more in the face of the crisis in Haiti, to dig a little deeper than they thought they could. And that in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis. I just can’t help but wonder what the world would be like if we recognize that every day is a catastrophe. And I can’t help but wonder what it might be like if we all dug a little deeper than we thought we could.
Word of the Day
kakistocracy (kak is toc ra cy) [kak-uh-stoc-ruh-see]
- (noun) government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.
- (noun) government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.
