I have been on hiatus. Mourning, abstaining from news for a while.... but this catastrophic event deserves some reflection.
First of all I am dumbfounded, but I don't believe in god and so I am okay with the (scientific) explanation for such incomprehensible catastrophe. My problem with god has always been this seemingly arbitrary, yet unbridled passion for inflicting pain on the weakest of his "children." I don't fucking get it. Why? People are all gaga about how this [catastrophe] shows we are all equally vulnerable: mother nature does not discriminate, yadi yadi yada. Bullshit, she fucking does. Hundreds of thousands of 'locals' dead, perhaps a few thousand tourists also dead. Yes I am counting, the magnitude matters. And yet, here in the US, we hear endless "human stories" about tsunami survivors, all of them fucking tourists: white people. Yes, boys and girls, the lives of white, wealthy people are more important than the lives of hundreds of thousands of "locals." I am sick of it. Some of these bastards left the scene quite early and were spared much of the atrocity, but we keep hearing this miraculous survivor shit. CNN (AC360), yes that fucking CNN, has been showing relatives who think their loved ones are dead, and then viola the next day they hear from them. Wonderful.
I will gripe about one more thing, and then I'll shut up - and donate some money to the victims.
"Could this happen, in the US? " If one more person says anything to that effect, I am going to hold them down and fart in their face. The cable news people, of course, have dug out an industry of people who will comment obsequiously on the matter. I am sick of it. I thought Cable News was bad enough until I spoke to some (American) friends about the Tsunami. And would you believe it, they too started reflecting on whether it could happen here, citing this or that reference. WHAT THE FUCK? IT'S NOT FUCKING HAPPENING HERE. IT IS ACTUALLY, REALLY HAPPENING SOMEWHERE ELSE (Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Somali) CREATING UNIMAGINABLE MISERY TO HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. REALLY. YES. NOW.
Am I wrong here? It seems horribly self-indulgent and selfish to me. There is a real catastrophe there, versus "oh my god, worry about an imaginary one here." I may be wrong, actually in situations such as these, I am trained to assume I am wrong until I can make sense of this bizarre, irrational behaviour (Thomas Kuhn would be proud of my efforts). So, is that how people relate to other people's pain? Is their compassion really only self-reflective? Can people feel no compassion without self pity? This one friend galled me by comparing this to the Garston flooding experience we had here during the hurricane season. Seemingly, she can understand the Indian Ocean disaster because she saw some marginally (by comaprison ) dramatic flooding in Richmond, VA.
"No, bitch - you can't fucking understand this!" You have never been in a situation where so much and so many have perished. You have never been in a situation where you have to make a decision about whether to save yourself, or attempt to help a perishing child and risk both of you dying-- I saw this story of this (Australian) mother who had to let go of one of her sons and choose to save the younger son, she could have hung on to both, but they would have all perished. -- It irritates me that my frineds think or say "they can relate" or understand this.
While I am at it, if one more person compares this to 9/11, I will vomit in their face. 9/11 killed 3000 people - yes, I will say it again, magnitude matters. Furthermore, somebody paid a price for 9/11 -- nobody is going to pay for this. Nobody is going to even begin asking questions beyond the fucking obvious about the causality of this event, and man's possible culpability in it. And no, I am not talking about Tsunami monitoring technology, athough that would be nice too, but that's obvious. It does not address the real sustainability problems caused by the destruction of coral reefs for example, the unbalanced population of coastline areas (tourism economies/jobs). We are building closer and closer to coastlines, faster.
I won't pretend to know all the issues, but it just seems to me that there is an opportunity to rebuild in South East Asia with sustainability in mind. Get people (the locals) out of fucking harms way, as a general rule. Some of the footage I have seen has been insensitive and disrespectful to a people in unfathhomable pain.
Peace.
Actually I have an job application to complete that's due tomorrow, yes bloody tomorrow - News Year's Eve.
