I’ve wanted to post something about the horror in Japan, but everything I’ve begun to write has seemed so trivial, so trite, next to the awful reality. Nothing I can say, or even imagine, from the safety and comfort of my home here in New York can gain any traction on what that reality must have been like for those who experienced it: to feel the solid rock beneath your feet shudder in sudden pain and buckle and snap and heave and roll — and then, still reeling, to look up as the infinite ocean itself rises high above you and pours itself down upon the land, sweeping away everything — everything.
The hideous indifference of Nature! Again it yawns and extends a finger, shearing us away en masse, and I think: “we are nothing”.
Then I look at the brave Japanese: doing what they can, and what they must.
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In A Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith postulates an earthquake in China which kills hundreds of thousands of people. Most people, he declares, would think about it for a day or two, contemplate the awfulness of it, and go on with their lives.
Smith then asks what the average person would do if faced with the knowledge that their big toe would be cut off next morning. Doubtless they would spend all night awake, aghast at the prospect of losing a toe.
Smith’s next question is what the average person would do if faced with a choice: lose your toe, or hundreds of thousands of Chinese will die. He answers the question by saying that of course, most people would, if given the choice, lose their toe and spare the Chinese.
Smith’s final question is why this disparity exists. People will obsess about losing a toe and give natural disasters a fleeting thought, but if they had to choose, they’d end up with nine toes. Smith answers his question by saying that this is the quality which makes people uniquely human: moral responsibility and the feeling of guilt for abdicating that responsibility.
I’m not sure that’s quite so uniquely human as Adam Smith imagined; the adaptive advantage of some kind of altruism seems to have shaped the behavior of other social animals as well (though of course the lose-a-toe-save-the-Chinese example couldn’t apply to any but us — you’d find it hard to explain to a chimp.)
I’d gladly give up a toe if it would stop the heartache I’ve been feeling for several days now. I once spent a good deal of time in Sendai and Fukushima and the surrounding areas. I no longer have close friends in the area — I guess that might be a blessing in the present circumstances.
Same here, Bob. I spent many years working closely with various Japanese recording artists, and spent some time over there myself. It’s heartbreaking to watch this disaster unfold.
I have a feeling, Peter, regarding that toe-and-earthquake example, that perhaps a lot more people than we’d like to think would keep the toe, if their choice and its consequences were never to be made public.
Could be. Here’s the other side:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Zone)