Haiti - part 1

The earthquake in Haiti devastated much of that impoverished island nation, resulting in the deaths of perhaps 45,000-50,000 people. Photos and videos of the aftermath convey some sense of the earthquake’s destructive power. What the news media has difficulty expressing is the immense human cost. How can we grasp a death toll of 45,000-50,000?

My parish has 800 members. My high school had 1600 students. My hometown had roughly 5000 residents. Chapel Hill, NC, has approximately 55,000 citizens. Even with those comparisons, I still grapple to comprehend fully the immensity of the earthquake’s human cost.

Immediate responses to the earthquake have included an outpouring of prayer, offers of help, and financial contributions. History suggests that the assistance will both fall short of the need and taper off over time. Part of the shortfall results from the difficulty of understanding the full scope of the need. Another factor is distance. For the most part, potential donors know few people (if anyone) who lives in Haiti; new and more immediate concerns cry out for our attention, pushing aside current ones. Donor fatigue is yet another factor: unending need and corresponding demands for assistance in the wake of countless disasters.

Underneath those and perhaps other factors lies a basic aspect of human nature. Human beings are genetically predisposed for reciprocal altruism. Humans help others in the expectation that the giver, in a time of need, will receive aid. The aid may come from those the person has directly helped or from people within a broader community of mutual interdependence. Mutual aid within a nuclear family, an extended family, a parish, and even a nation exemplify the expanding circles to which and from which the reciprocal altruistic can reasonably expect to give and receive aid.

A group’s social fabric evidences fraying, even tears and holes, when reasonable expectations for reciprocal altruism to prevail as an ethical norm no longer hold. Egoism, focusing on self, then becomes the norm. Signs of this happening in the United States are appearing as the nation turns its back on its neediest citizens.

Similarly, reciprocal altruism limits human response to disasters that occur at some distance. The response to Katrina hit that limit. The response to disasters abroad hit that limit even sooner. Haiti is unlikely to prove an exception.