The Real Thing

[mamculuna]

I was thinking about the differences in how we perceive natural disasters as opposed to man-made ones. A terrorist act like 9/11, etc., is set up for maximum public exposure--the images that appear on TV and online all over the world are the real point. Since we get those images so clearly and so immediately, the event seems real to us. But the natural disasters aren't set up that way. The news leaks out, a little at a time. No one was filming the waves that hit during the Tsunami, and only now are we beginning to get some visual images that make it seem real to us.

But it is real. This is a site about one refugee camp before the disaster and the people who lived there. It makes it real to me:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ceret/52383.html

Comments

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

Hi! :-)

Interesting: a friend and I were discussing how we relate to deaths of near-and-dear, deaths of friends / acquaintances, deaths of people in the community, deaths of a number of people (say a bus or industrial accident), and then something like this. )If we find it hard to relate to 50, can we related at all to 50,000?)
But niether of us brought up the distinction of "natural" and "man-made" ... is a plane crash an act of God, like an earthquake? Maybe not in terms of legal liability, but to us mere mortals, the two seem quite similar!

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I see that. I guess the point I meant to make was terrorist vs accidental, perhaps. Just seems that the photo ops for 9/11 were so very excellent. And even King and Gandhi admitted to playing to the media...but hurricanes and earthquakes don't seem quite that calculated.

My own experience of political action maybe formed that theory--who would stage a protest with no chance of media coverage?

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

"... who would stage a protest with no chance of media coverage?"
*looks around*
*raises hand*