The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

It just doesn’t make sense.

During the bushfires of December and January that caused so much devastation here in Australia over the summer of 2019-2020 we saw, in the main, the best of people.

As the roaring flames tore through community after community leaving devastation in its path, it seemed as though people of the world sprung to their feet wanting to help. Donations of goods flowed, people emptied their wardrobes and fridges, sharing whatever they had with those that had lost everything. A esprit de corps existed and it felt bloody good to be an Australian during our time of need. When we were down we responded. We were there to pull a mate up and wrap an arm around her shoulders.

So what happened? Within weeks we are making a rush for dunny paper, taking more than we will ever need, pushing the old and infirm out of the way, just so we could leave with a shopping trolley full of paper that we would be flushing down the dunny or more likely storing in the wardrobe until 2030 until the final roll is called upon.

In the US the FBI has reported that in March of this year they have seen an increase of 91% for handguns and 74% for long arms (rifles etc) for the same period in 2019. All that attributed to the fear of the CoronaVirus.

There is nothing to suggest the Coronavirus is going to manifest itself into something that breaks into our homes in the middle of the night and abducts our children at gun point, nor is there anything to suggest that we are going to be spending an inordinate amount of time on the dunny. So what happened to our logical thinking and why such a different response to two events so close in proximity?

I spent the best part of 2007/2008 working on a paper that was presented to the member countries of Interpol with a Secret classification that looked at the threats and trends which related to Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear terrorism. The one key consistency was that more often than not the fear was greater than the actual threat posed.

The very visceral fear that is created by the unknown and threat to our personal safety makes sense and is somewhat predictable, but it doesn’t make sense to how we responded to the fires and then the current situation. It is as though our compassion, rational thought and logical thinking was exhausted by the fires.

Buying guns right now makes as much sense to combatting this virus as does buying trolley loads of dunny paper.

What will lead us though these times are trolley loads of compassion, patience and understanding. And that’s bloody hard when you might have lost your income and sense of meaning for getting out of bed each day. I get that. I’ve seen that and right now we are in the fight of our lives at Hands Across the Water, to continue to do what we have been doing for the last 15 years. To be honest the alternative to finding a way of continuing is not something I want to entertain.

We have a choice how we respond to the situation before us and having been involved in crisis and disasters across the globe from bombings, tsunamis, and other humanitarian responses, I lean towards the belief that when we develop an evidence based approach and smother that in compassion and generosity rather than fear and scarcity, we will be ok.

Thanks Pete