Haiti: Compassion Survives the Horror

Can you imagine a world where everyone watched the horror of dead bodies piling up on the streets in Haiti, and no one did anything to help? Before you reply that this would never happen, let me remind you of the high school students at a dance who watched for two hours while a female student was gang-raped in the back of the school. And similar incidents have been reported on city streets in the US. Therefore, we shouldn’t take for granted the world-wide outpouring of compassion and assistance that is happening in response to the death and devastation left by the Haitian earthquake.

It is sad and frustrating that death is moving so rapidly, while the forces of life seem to move in slow motion. It’s taken precious days for a US hospital ship to be prepared, and it’ll take another week or so for it to get to Haiti. But along with the frustration and sadness, I feel gratitude that human beings are still capable of responding viscerally with compassion and reaching out to help; whether it’s sending money or going as part of search, rescue and medical teams.

In the day-to-day pressure of life, our concern is usually narrowed to our own affairs and to those close to us; and we can forget that we will actually hurt when strangers are suffering and dying. We make our calculations and decisions and take actions based on this amnesia. In fact, we’ve built our entire economic system on proud self-interest, and made it into an almost religious principle: If we each pursue our own self-interest, somehow magically, the invisible hand makes everything fair and alright for the common good.

There is no doubt that self-interest is an essential motivator of human action and has to be one of our foundational principles. But we shouldn’t have to experience the horror of death and suffering such as in Haiti, to temporarily remind us that the principle of compassion is just as fundamental. It so happens that at this very time, we are in the process of rebuilding a world economic system that has been devastated by our sacred principle of self-interest (actually greed). We shouldn’t be considered soft-headed if we insist on building a new world economic system and community that proudly elevates compassion to the same level that we put self-interest, as foundational principles. Disasters like in Haiti should remind us that self-interest and compassion are not polar opposite, but are part of the same human picture, if we only have the vision to see it.

What do you think? Let me know at www.sopphia.com