Towards a more reasonable response to disasters

RE JAPAN. NEW ZEALAND earthquakes and tsunamis this month

Natural disasters certainly make us think. Infact,even though I am a geoscience risk management specialist who has had the satisfaction of reducing people's exposure to risk on many levels, I feel threatened by some disasters too: Plates subducting and killing people challenges my faith because it reminds me of my powerless and makes me wonder about the Creators too. But not to the point of neurosis or betrayal -- I trust.Y ou might be a better judge than I?

However that aside (looking for more objectivity) ; If we take soundly experienced psychologists seriously ( see researchers listed in this link , we can accept that the content of our response is often more deeply emotional than rational.( our sense of powerlessness is something we must face squarely in ourselves and in others as Rollo May does in his book ( Power and Innocence )

Our own Australian Telecom 2000 report (1998?) describes the increasing tendency for millions to expend their emotional energy on people faraway as a ' maladaptive' trend - That report insists that we all need to use the emotional energy more productively(locally) .Natural disasters ( unlike man made) remind us of our powerlessness and, it seems , our phobias about powerlessness.
To respond positively and more objectively ( Think of all the overblown fears often generated ) we need as Rollo May has pointed out, to not feed pseudo innocence but take on Jesus call to walk the Jericho road and " do what you can where you can '.

We have the power but we do need to remind each other to use it. The 'maladaptive" focuses on the few , the Jericho road response is a proven recipe for billions .
Often our leaders project this overereaction to percieved powerlessness by assumming power they do not have.
Our emotional response to others pain often says more about our needs than it does about the needs of people on the ground.
I say therefore: lets keep it largely local , rational , progressive ( Our planning heritage is very positive) and positive .
And resist the "maladaptive" and unproductive which can be very wasteful .
Objective upto date science on nuclear sites
You Have a good day and enjoy the road and how the sun shines on it .

Projection - and how to detect it

Some Journos reporting on the crisis around the Mediteranean at the moment keep forcing the words "democracy" on the ambitions of protesters and "dictator" on the danger . Using those words in shallow and unsubstantial. and we have our own dictators
By encouraging the bland democracy idea over the perceived dictator image ( ruler of every household has to be a kind of dragon ) we may be missing the opportunity for reform.
We celebrated with Russia when the wall came down, but did we encourage the reform of their twisted economic system that might have kept them from "the new tsars" ( and another twisted eco system )The tragedies of Russia are avoidable direct products of too much enthusiasm over capitalism - it has limits mate and we live in a mixed economy )
If you are not convinced that projection is a common disease read on

Floods of emotion over floods

For a change we can't blame the media and polys for drumming up the emotion. Excessive flooding near Brisbane and in our northern Victorain rivers in last few months ( Summer 2011 is nothing unexpected when the sun shines over the Capricornian line.( statistically that is )
Insurance agents and intelligent earth students do not worry , they know .( that why they won't pay - why do intelligent people support careless and unthinking actions? ) See the post at the start of this Blog ,. Clearly there is more energy being consumed by those who worry than those who know. All the money that people give could be given to greater causes?

When people don't talk

You and I know something's wrong ,very wrong . but do the wannabes? . No it seems they blather on all the more solving problems without listening . The city has been doing it badly for decades now about the country and SO
Many farmers just do not talk a ( story here)- They may get angry but they are not sure anyone's listening - especially when the city and all the drip feed quangos like those driven by the latest fad ( river health. they don't even know what it is !) know so much about their backyard Bullsh direct from the careless greens.

Driving people to suicide

Noone does it deliberately, but there are things we do that don't help
We run away because we are afraid their depression will make us depressed.
However mature adults learn that doing what you don't like ( getting closer) is somehow good for us ----eh!
Depressed people are hard company - They drive away the fainthearted .
See below ) But YOU can help - just listen and nod face to face you don't have to solve any dilemmas : Get in the car and go there . Get out the pen and post the letter off . Weep with those who weep and we will stop weeping and being angry all the time .
Things we do that don't help
1 We stay away
2. We think we have to offer solutions- we don't . Honest sharing is needed . Telling them they are OK / everything is OK , when they haven't resolved their own guilt is not right either . Say nothing is fine !What use are mere words
3. Ignoring their real feelings and maybe internal confusion . ( got to know what they are really thinking not just what they say upfront )
4. Being Sentimental when they want you to be serious , straightforward and strong -Ask the hard questions . Offer to let them put the hard questions and doubts they have. Say clearly what's wrong and how to fix it ( restoration can comes with objectivity but never with denial)
5 Avoid ticking good behaviour boxes- people in trouble often know how to behave well . What they don't always know or accept is how and why they should stop doing something they enjoy ( resisting temptation; doing something they need to do, not just what they want to do )
6 Not help the person accept their own failures ( resisting the idea that the problem is someone else's )
7 Talking about their dilemmas without talking to them first is wrong ( 8th commandment forbids you to bear informnation away from , rather than back to, the person of concern. Check everything with the person first )
8 Maladjustments of the telecommunication age : ( Telecom 2000 report) Tv does this by talking about a persons problems when its none of our business - eg Ben Cousins tonight on TV - we should leave the bloke alone !
9 Real understanding of rural dilemmas . Assumming because farming families have high assets that are they are rich . Most farming families sacrifice a lot over many generations to keep the farm with high levels of unpaid labour going back in many cases generations ( wives and children in particular - why do think " the young farmer can't get a wife" ? . Don't patronise them - they will do anything to carry the burden their grandparents bore - its too easy to say " cash it all in" Life on the farm is not summed up in 2 columns of a ledger
10. Real understanding of rural dilemmas Well meaning "green" talk can be blatantly offensive because its partial ( a risk is not a reality ) , ignorant or simplistic .Ask questions BLOG The best conservationists this country will ever have are landholders. They used to be "the salt of the earth" . Now listening to some smartarses from the city, you would think they were the main perpetrators of our environmental problems - "the scum of the earth".
If you want to help --learn to listen and study resilience - the sky will not fall ( the earth, unlike our computers, was made resilient) while people on the earth listen to the earth and love each other enough to tell them in the rare cases ( mainly overseas ) where they are pushing it, and MAYBE their own will, too hard .

Detect a gap between the participant and the observer?

Well put by Jonathan Lyn and Antony Jay in the BBC series Yes Minister
"Irregular verbs:
----I have an independent mind
----You are an eccentric
----He is round the twist"
In Australia ,we have a great comeback line " Takes one to know one " Does it apply in the case of your next/ last confrontation ?

Caring is not all its cracked up to be

Sometimes, conspicuous compassion does real damage. The retired anthropologist Roger Sandall shows how well-meaning efforts to promote Aboriginal "identity" and "cultural awareness" in schools have increased indigenous illiteracy in English. This renders young Aboriginal people almost unemployable and condemns them to a life of poverty, ensuring another generation of victims for the rest of us to feel sorry about.

Why do we so desperately want to show we care? It is a symptom of what the psychologist Oliver James has dubbed our "low serotonin" society. Despite being healthier, richer and better-off than in living memory, we in the West are more depressed than ever. Institutions such as the church, marriage and the family have withered in the postwar era. Raised in fragmented family units, more of us live by ourselves. Ostentatious caring permits the lonely nation to forge new social bonds. As James concludes: "A common impulse behind wanting to give love unconditionally to non-intimates is the desire to receive it."

From the review of patrick wests book published by CIS december 2005