Yi-Fu Tuan - Dear Colleague

January 11, 2005

Dear Colleague,

Ten days after the tsunami struck, 150,000 are believed dead, 500,000 injured, and 5 million destitute and homeless along the shores of the Indian Ocean. These round numbers indicate the uncertainty, and it is most likely that they will all rise as the counting goes on. An image of numbing horror is an aerial shot of the Aceh beach, littered mile after mile with destroyed houses and fishing boats, all smeared in a sort of black muck, through which--here and there--one can catch a glimpse of a hand, a leg, a bloated chest, of the rotting corpses. At this scale, the human heart and mind seem powerless to respond. For most of us in the unaffected parts of the world, feelings begin to unjam only when we look at pictures of individual victims, particularly when these are children. Current estimate is that about a third of those killed are children. The world's response is heroic. Governments vie with one another in sending money and support. Some fifty relief agencies from around the world have poured in aid. Religious institutions--Buddhist, Hindu, and Moslem--do what they can. However, when certain imams start to preach that the disaster is God's way of punishing humans for their impiety, I feel the bile rising in my throat and, even more, incomprehension that these "servants of God" should paint their Master in such a lurid light.

Other natural disasters have killed as many or even more people. For example, in 1970, cyclones killed half a million people of the newly founded nation of Bangladesh. But these other disasters of our time fail to command the world's attention in the way the tsunami havoc of December 26, 2004 does. Why is this? Some answers have been given, including the deeply disturbing one that European tourists are among the victims. Maybe. But I am not that much of a cynic. In this disaster, some subconscious factors--I believe--come into play that add to our sense of horror and bewilderment. One is that humans are not the cause this time. Floods and even tropical cyclones may be blamed on humans for their role in deforestation and global warming. But a tsunami is caused by a shift in the tectonic plate--nature's own work pure and simple! Another is that fishermen harvesting the ocean for a modest livelihood and European families going down south to unfreeze their limbs are pictures of (relative) innocence. Why these people rather than the baddies? A third is the suddenness of the change in nature's mood, from benignity to towering rage. December 26th opens with an idyllic scene of blue sky and calm ocean, which is normal for this time of the year. The disaster itself is preceded by a withdrawal of the ocean exposing a vast stretch of sand and stranded fish, to which children are gleefully drawn, thinking perhaps that the ocean is even more benign than usual. But of course the withdrawal is quickly followed by a towering wall of water--a moving wall of death.

Two-and-a-half year old Ragnar, a Swedish boy, proudly wears his blue water wings in preparation for a dip in the hotel's pool. The next thing he knows is that he is in his father's slippery arm, choking in water. "Daddy, I am scared!" The father loses his grip. He turns around and sees his small child carried out to the ocean on a pair of blue water wings. Humans dominate and abuse nature for all sorts of reasons, including insatiable greed. One reason that is rarely mentioned, because it seems a sacrilege, is pure hatred.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu