Tag: Earthquake

Easily swayed

According to social scientists, any two people are only separated by 6 to 7 degrees of connection. Last week I put it to test.

Surely enough, the quake victims in Japan somehow are separated from me by only three degrees. My niece’s friend had relatives who fled Japan and came to stay with them. Two short introductions and a short ride stand between us.

We are living on a planet of 7 billion people, 2 of which are online.

The cumulative brain powers are enormous. For the first time, it seems as if a lot of things are now made possible, from wikipedia to wikileaks.

Thirty years ago, I gave up my summer in between school years to do relief work. The only resources at my disposal was an address book of friends from college and a roll of stamps. I copied fund-raising letters, sent out to my “network” and waited for donation. Quite a risky adventure, both on the funding side and visa turn-around time. But we pulled it off. The summer turned out to be a highlight of my life.

If we had the online resources as currently available, we would probably have uploaded a Youtube clip of boat people cramped and confined in Hong Kong prison facilities, women who were raped and turned cannibalistic to survive….

You know the drill. My contention is, we are now resource-rich, but are we becoming more compassionate ? In other words, does the good-will increase proportionately with the tools to express it? Or precisely because of information-overload that led to compassion fatigue?

To sell something people need and want is easy. Costs vs benefits results in change (buy).

To sell an idea that people can become their better selves requires enchantment.

People died in mass protests (herd instinct) or annual Run-of-the-Bulls (even cheese rolling downhills). But to spare a change for the guy holding the homeless sign takes a lot more. He will need to sing and dance. He will have to put on an act of desperation before the lights turn green.

We act differently in public vs in private.

When survival instinct kicks in, self-preservation is above all else.

Multiply that 7 billion times. Then we get the picture of state of the world.

How does the quake in Japan affect our lives: a lot. Someone relates to someone who knows my relatives is suffering. He/she is doubling up in a house near ours.

Then the Toyota dealers in town won’t get foreign parts etc… Go Hyundai, this is your chance in this no-hire-no-fire economy. Sometimes people change because they are forced to, not because they would like to. But change is as sure as the sun that rises tomorrow. You don’t see it because you are not 30,000 feet above ground. Those who are at the executive level know to expect change, prepare contingencies for it, and profit from it. Same crisis, but it is danger to some and opportunity to others. We will learn to make use of the Web from sharing cute kitten clips to vendor’s immolation clip. Welcome to the age of participation/consumption. It’s never been more exciting and dynamic than time present, when both push and pull technologies are vying for our attention, swinging and swaying our votes and demanding our devotion. Hold on to your wallet while keeping an open mind, to quote Buffett.

The damage of denial

At least, we heard from the Japanese government that their responses were too underwhelming to match the size of March-11th-2011 quake.

Back in 79, officials released piecemeal information out of Harrisburg, PA about nuclear reactors and radiation leaks (I happened to wire the mike and test the sound before the live taping of then Governor Dick Thornburgh).

That event happened a few years after my family and I had heard the official version from then South Vietnamese government to stay indoors due to 24-hr imposed curfew.

I am sure in Libya, people are being fed similar lines (the French army was taking action along with UN Security Council forces to finish off what Reagan‘s strike had missed).

Finally, in recent memory, we were intoxicated with pitches from dot.com to real estate peddlers, that prices would always go up and that we should have bought “yesterday”.

Burned and churned. Except that we have no place to hide within our Eco System.

We got mobile apps, but we have no mobility.

Tsunamis, like recession, happened more often, and clustered together

within the past 14 months.

I heard the word “evacuation” quite often in my life time.

For me, the string started in 1975 and as mentioned, 79 in PA.

Then came the self-evacuation of the so-called Boat People in 81 which I turned around to help out.

In 1995 I lived near Northridge and got shaken by the Southern California earthquake in my sleep.

It was scary. Now, put those experiences together,  I can relate to evacuees of the Japanese three-punch disaster : earth quake, tsunami and radiation.

It takes years for victims to recover, if at all.

Disaster, denial and  the damages (now estimated at 350 Billion).

The sadness of being uprooted.

Of losing those that were near and dear to you.

Homelessness is a state of mind.

You can seek shelter, under a roof, but you can never come home again.

Years later, when I visited my mom in the nursing home, I had to sign in as a “visitor”.

Evacuees always told themselves that this was just a temporary arrangement until the situation is back to normal. They will keep telling themselves that they will someday rebuild the past to its former glory. But it’s just a dream, and more to it, a denial.

Moreover, the damage of denial doesn’t just stop with financial costs. Other hidden costs such as being uprooted, self-alienation and crisis of confidence.

It’s not just possession that counts. It’s a person’s attachment to possession

long after they are wiped out (savings in safes are found floating ashore along with bodies). Japanese are known to be quite attached to the land.

A recent survey shows junior executives in Japan just don’t like to be sent overseas even when it’s all-paid-for tuition during their stint abroad.

They like to stay put, to derive their significance and social acceptance from the collective society. Ironically, it’s their near-homogeneous  and aging culture, translated to national pride, that we hardly heard of any incident of looting (au contraire, a 9-year-old orphan even surrendered his ration which someone gave him out of turn, to get back in line awaiting his turn). Blanket-wrapped “evacuees” like that boy, will have to seek temporary homes in schools built on high ground , just stop short of waving the “Help Us” signs once seen  from Air Force One flyby during Katrina.

When heads roll, as they always will in that region (Japan Airline President committed suicide over a plane crash) we will see the real phoenix rising from the ash. I couldn’t help admire the scene where fire fighters got  their”kamikaze” pep talk before driving into and spraying water inside the now-disastrous nuclear zone (as of this edit, it is upgraded to level 7).

Take it as a lesson learned. When it comes to dealing with disaster, in this Twitter age, the best PR is a spin-free version. Anything less furthers the damage.

P.S.As of this edit, the nuclear advisor to Prime Minister Kan resigned, seeing “no point of being there”.

http://www.readersupportednews.org/news-section2/338-177/5785-japans-nuclear-adviser-resigns-in-tearful-protest

Oil and Water

Oil price backed down as tsunami water gushed up to Japanese shores.

The two shall never mix.

Middle East rising. Pacific falling.

News of a thousand deaths abroad eclipsed news of petty thefts at home.

Statistically, street crime is down while cyber-crime up.

I admire Net Gen’s speed to mobilize relief efforts e.g. People Finder by Google,

Gaga’s wrist bands.

Celebrities should leverage their popularity, from being trend setters to thought leaders. Jet Li has been outspoken about one’s mission in life (has been sighted to give blood etc…), Angelina Jolie as UN Ambassador and Robert Redford pushed the Green button.

It turns out that while Oil and Water don’t mix, celebrities can take up a cause without damaging their brand. Charity actually can deepen their personal growth, give them more satisfaction as human being, and stretch their empathic fibers.

We are “born this way” i.e. to feel others’ burden.

I saw a photo of an old Japanese lady (the graying demographic) in front of her house-turn-rubble due to Earthquake, and I couldn’t continue with the evening news.

9/11 and Katrina added together.

Ocean view turned nightmares.

Beautiful water gushing in the wrong place.

CNN kept reporting that on that only road leading up North, they couldn’t spot military or emergency vehicles. Perhaps they cut down on first responders,

or they used choppers more than four-wheels.

Whatever the case, there is no play book when it comes to disaster-handling.

A nation can only go so far in emergency preparation.

Just like our personal act of locking our doors at night.

Mostly for assurance. When hit with 8.9 magnitude that, according to an eye-witness ” buildings stray back and forth like trees in the wind”- people froze.

Video footage from the 2004 tsunami showed people ran away from gushing water. Japan was on the verge of building world’s tallest cell tower.

I am not sure this catastrophe will cause them to reevaluate earlier stress estimates.

In my earlier blog, I referred to the warmth of human comfort and bonding through crisis.

I hope nature-causing suffering be relieved in part by human relief efforts.

I hope world rally to rescue won’t turn too soon to compassion fatigue.

Strike when the iron is hot. But don’t burn it out.

And you don’t have to wait until you have fame to start sharing a piece of yourself. In “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” we find the Native American character offers his bunkmate some chewing gum.

(Jack turned mischievous when discovering that that supposedly deaf and dumb man could actually talk).

I understood now that while the taste lasts much longer than the gum, it’s the first step that counts. And the comfort of strangers often times warms the other-wise hardened heart. Soft healing power of shared empathy in random disaster. Oil and Water don’t mix, but can co-exist. As close as the elements are allowed to.