A decent post from CNN on Haiti

[tabatha]

(I think this will be a last post on this topic, but I cannot forget Haiti).

It has become a commonplace that it is hard to comprehend the disaster in Haiti.

If so, and if we hope to provide Haitians with anything like the help that they need, then we must understand where our minds fail us.

One problem that we do not yet face is having our compassion numbed by the sheer magnitude of the calamity. Indeed, it has evoked a deep visceral response, as we see graphic images of individual suffering on a background of mass devastation. When our local tea store is devoting 20 percent of sales to relief and cell phone donations keep pouring in, the scope of the tragedy is mobilizing, not paralyzing.

The threat to our compassion comes, rather, from feeling ineffective. We risk that failure if we cannot grasp the realities facing Haiti. Here, we face two deep mental challenges.

.....

In some ways, supplying Haiti is easier. Technology is vastly improved and the world much wealthier. But in other ways, supplying Haiti is even more difficult than the Berlin Airlift. Berlin was occupied territory, under Allied military rule; while Haiti has little functioning government, and those trying to help are struggling to work out their division of labor.

If we are not thinking in terms of an effort as massive and risky as the Berlin Airlift, then we have not gotten our minds around the problem. Unless we grasp the complexity and magnitude of the task, then we may be expecting brave, dedicated relief workers to do the impossible -- and be disappointed when they cannot do it all. As a nation, we may fail to support our leaders in providing the sustained resources that the mission requires.

If our collective imagination and our sense of history fail us, then we will not achieve the results that our compassion demands -- and will fail Haiti and its people in their long, difficult road to recovery.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/22/fischhoff.tierney.haiti.recovery/index.html?hpt=T2