Disaster in Haiti

Haiti has suffered from a terrible earthquake which has flattened its main city and left thousands dead and many more homeless. This is also the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. As such, its ability to cope with a disaster of this scale is severely limited. Disasters, whether natural or otherwise tend to test the mettle of the affected society to the utmost. Haiti seems to be unusually ill equipped to deal with a disaster of this scale. Much of the blame for this seems to rest with interference by outside powers.

Most societies have a natural resilience that enables them to recover fairly quickly from disasters and disturbances. Most of the affected areas of the countries that were affected by the Tsunami of 2004 were well on the road to recovery with a fairly short span of time. Sometimes, outsiders are surprised by the extent of the ill preparedness of societies that one normally thinks would be fairly well prepared. Thus the outside world was surprised by the inept response of the US government to Hurricane Katrina.

In recent time, the scale and speed of natural and man made disasters seems to have increased enormously. Partly this is due to larger number of people living in disaster prone areas. Thus for example, there is an increase in the number of people living in flood prone riverside areas. This in turn is driven partly by a larger number of people seeking housing on increasingly scarce land, partly by developers opening up marginal areas for developers and partly by increasing land prices in areas that are considered desirable. Then there are the disasters which are accentuated because of development. Economic forces have increased pressure on all types of natural resources. A major reason why the Asian Tsunami was so devastating was that the mangrove swamps that would have absorbed the force of the waves had been cleared in the name of development and tourism. Similarly in Haiti, forest cover was denuded in the name of development. In urban landscapes, the effect of disaster is heightened as a result of greed. Land developers in a bid to push up profits and complete projects quickly cut corners. This results in unsafe structures which collapse when something like an earthquake or a storm strikes. When entire infrastructures collapse, relief work becomes extremely difficult.

Hypocrisy

Image by mikebaird via Flickr

What is hypocricy and how do we as individuals and as a society define it? Do we have separate standards of behavior in our personal and public lives? Do we not as a society exercise hypocrisy when we demand a higher standard of conduct from public personalities than what we ourselves are willing to exercise?

Interesting questions all. This is an issue of import to discuss. Later.

Incidentally, incase you are wondering what is the relevance of the picture to the topic at hand; there is none. I just happened to like the picture and decided to put it in.

A Purpose Driven Life

What is the meaning of life? OK, I know this is philosophical question and many brilliant minds have pondered over this and generally failed to come to a satisfactory (or even adequate) answer. However, I am not asking this question in the sense of why are we in this world or in the sense of is there a point to living; interesting though questions of such nature may be. I have something else in mind. Let me explain.

Nearly all of us acquire our values through an essentially osmotic process. We see the behavior of our parents, siblings, teachers, other people in authority. We are told the broad values that society expects through our schools. So we learn that it is considered bad to cheat or steal or lie etc. and we start avoiding those kinds of activities that were large numbers of people to do them would result in the larger society becoming dysfunctional. This is adequate during our childhood and teen years. These are times when we are learning and have not become mature enough to formulate our own set of values. However, our moral/ethical development tends to freeze at this point. Having integrated basic values into our psyche, we don't proceed further in our moral/ethical development. The net result is that we tend to stumble our way through life.

Modern society presents us with choices that test our moral/ethical boundaries. Is stealing bad? Nearly all of us will say yes. So shoplifting is bad and most people will avoid the temptation of doing so. What about downloading a song via file-sharing? Is that bad? Now we have entered a gray area. Some people will say yes, some will say no and most will not have thought about the issue. For those who say yes, how many will have thought through the issue? Not many I suspect. Similarly we have the case of stem cell research? Good or bad? There are some people who have thought through this issue, come to a conclusion one way or the other and are vocal about it. There are others (perhaps a larger number) who merely express what they perceive the majority opinion to be and still others (perhaps the largest number) who have not thought about this at all.

While all this may sound abstract, the ramifications of frozen moral/ethical development are many and are serious. Take the case of Tiger Woods. Brilliant sportsman who achieves stunning success early in life. Marries a beautiful woman. Makes a billion bucks literally. A good looking, decent clean living guy. Until we learn that he's been cheating on his wife and carrying on a double life. This is I think a good illustration of a frozen moral/ethical development. The temptations were there obviously. But Mr. Woods did not have the moral capacity to not succumb to them. The consequence of his risky behavior was that he lost lucrative sponsorship deals, he had to take an indefinite moratorium on playing golf - a sport that he clearly loves and excels at and there is a strong chance that he may have destroyed his marriage.

Lest one thinks that this is remote from him/her, consider the situation where you are offered some money as a "gift". Morally/ethically wrong or not? Or what about the situation of a salesperson who is pursuing an account and the account makes it clear that a "gift" would not be unwelcome. Not making the "gift" could mean not making the sale which will impact your target. So the same question. Morally/ethically wrong or not? Or take the case of non alcoholic drinks being sold in Muslim countries. Consumption of alcohol is forbidden to Muslims by Islam. Non alcoholic drinks clearly do not break the letter of the ban but are they not breaking its spirit?

The point is that all of us individually as adults need to think about and clarify the moral/ethical dimensions of our life. Failing to do so results in us wandering haphazardly through our existence. We are likely to engage in actions that we later look back with regret. Even worse, we may look back on our life and think what a waste.

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I Am Back! (Hopfully)

Its been a long absence. Part of the blame is on me and part of the blame is on a mental block that I suddenly suffered from. However now (hopefully) I will be updating this more regularly.