Sunday January 2, 2005
Tsunami makes us a global stadium, not global village
The year 2004 saved its biggest news story for its final week. The earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean makes other stories pale by comparison.
As I write this, the estimated death toll has passed 100,000, and is still climbing.
Journalists have, of course, reported from the places they can reach — the heavily populated centers in Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Indonesia… But there are also thousands of islands scattered across the Indian Ocean – the Seychelles, the Cocos (or Keeling) Islands, Reunion, the Maldives, the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Mauritius…
Ironically, Mauritius was scheduled to host the International Meeting on Small Islands Developing States in just two weeks time.
Years ago, a colleague quit his job to buy a resort on the Maldives islands. He said the highest point on his entire island rose no more than three feet above sea level – far less than the wave that surged across the island chain last week.
According to news reports, more than half of Maldives capital, Male, was under water. Another island was completely submerged.
Voyeurs of disaster
The late media guru Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “global village.” In some ways, media coverage does make us a global village. We heard about the earthquake and tidal wave within hours of its happening. We got amateur video played over and over again, from points all around the Indian Ocean.
We were shocked, appalled, and fascinated.
But we were not truly reacting like a village. More like a global stadium, where we could observe the action without getting personally involved.
Al Forrest, for 23 years the editor of The United Church Observer, used to define a village church as “a place where, if you\’re not there, you\’re missed.”
Few of us, here in the comfortable western world, felt any direct connection to a tragedy almost exactly on the opposite side of the globe. We were voyeurs, not participants.
That\’s what\’s still missing from a global village.
Getting connected
Let me shift the setting.
For the first six years of my education, I attended a school high in the foothills of the Himalayas, in northern India. Woodstock was always relatively small. Its total enrollment never rose above the hundreds; it never had more than one class for any grade. Its buildings spill down the steep slopes like tumbled Lego blocks.
But Woodstock excelled at three things – academic excellence, dedicated teachers, and cultural diversity. The students, back then, were typically children of missionaries or colonial administrators. My class – I would have graduated in 1952, had my parents not moved to Canada – contained children from half a dozen countries.
Current grad classes are even more diverse. Four years ago, I talked with students from Japan, Korea, Russia, Holland, Tanzania, Kuwait, and Sri Lanka.
The morning after the tsunami, a Woodstock grad currently living in Italy, Deirdre Strachan, posted this message on the Internet: “One of the joys of being a Woodstocker is that you know someone just about anyplace in the world. Which is also one of the sorrows – no matter what horrible thing is going on in the world, we can be almost guaranteed that someone we\’re connected to will be involved.”
That\’s the beginning of a true global village.
Toronto writer Val Ross told me once about how she and her mother adopted a Haitian child through the Foster Parents Plan.
At first, it was a kind of self-serving altruism, the sort of thing that you feel you ought to do because you are more fortunate than others.
Then through letters the boy became more than just a kid with a strange name. They started reading about Haitian culture and history.
When a hurricane slashed across Haiti, they found themselves poring over atlases and maps, trying to figure out if their foster child was affected, and how badly.
Eventually, they got so involved with him that they traveled to Haiti, to meet him, to see where he lived, to become more intimately involved in his life.
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Obviously, we can\’t feel that connection with each of six billion other inhabitants of this planet. But we can know somebody who knows somebody…
So that when a hurricane hits Haiti, a tsunami batters Indonesia, an earthquake flattens Iran, even if we don\’t personally know a resident of that area, we can know someone who does. Someone who has made the effort to maintain contacts with people who live different lives, worship different gods, live in a different culture.
Governments can\’t do this. Nor can corporations. They work at an official level, with interchangeable other officials.
Individuals can. So can churches, charities, and NGOs (non-governmental organizations). Canadian media have focused attention on World Vision, the Red Cross, Medicines Sans Frontiers, and UNICEF – all worthy causes.
Personally, I prefer smaller charities, if only because the smaller the institution, the more likely they are to work at a personal level. The Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation, for example, works exclusively with a handful of hill villages in Nepal.
Although I would never want to see colonialism return, I do sometimes lament the loss of missionary contacts. Missionaries had faults, but they rarely chose their vocations for career enhancement. They were dedicated, and for the most part scrupulously honest. Through much of Africa and Asia, local organizations routinely chose a missionary as treasurer, because they could trust that person not to divert funds to the obligations of extended families.
Similar integrity is still found in most local pastors.
Unfortunately, we no longer know who they are.
The tsunami has raised the need to develop a network of seismologists and government officials for the Indian Ocean.
I suggest it also raises the need to build and rebuild networks of ordinary people who keep in touch simply because they care about each other.
Perhaps eventually we can progress from global stadiums to global villages.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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