Sunday September 4, 2005
Looters reveal moral immaturity
The statistics stagger the mind – 80% of New Orleans flooded, 233 km/hr winds, thousands trapped on roofs or in attics, several million without power, billions of dollars damage…
A wry memo circulating on the Internet blamed hurricane Katrina on Pat Robertson\’s fatwa against Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez: “To victims of Katrina – relax, God\’s just looking for Pat Robertson.”
Even if true, it would be small comfort to victims.
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour might be forgiven for some hyperbole after viewing the destruction from the air: “I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago.”
There are significance differences, of course. Hiroshima was flattened; New Orleans, merely flooded. Hiroshima was a deliberate act of destruction; hurricane Katrina, an accident of nature.
Perhaps more significantly, Hiroshima had nothing left to loot.
A day after the flooding, New Orleans suffered a looting frenzy. Looters filled garbage cans and plastic tubs with stolen merchandise, and floated their booty down the streets.
Gangs used a forklift to smash open Wal-Mart\’s stock of guns, and armed themselves with handguns, shotguns, rifles, and assault weapons.
Associated Press reported that much of the looting took place “in full view of police and National Guard troops.” One officer explained, on TV, that saving lives mattered more than saving stores.
A man with ten pairs of jeans slung over one arm was asked if he was an employee trying to salvage things. “No,” he replied, “that\’s everybody\’s store now!”
“It\’s about survival,” said a woman, as her husband waded out of a supermarket with a bundle of food on his head. “We got to feed our children.”
Looking after number one
Crisis unveils the best and the worst of our social fabric. Or, to mix metaphors a little, it strips the veneer off our social furniture and shows us what kind of wood we\’re really made of.
On the one hand, thousands of volunteers and service personnel laboured unceasingly to rescue others. Victims generously shared what little they had, and often risked their own survival to help others.
On the other hand, there are those who see only an opportunity to benefit from others\’ misfortune. Like the looters.
I haven\’t seen any newspaper reports of this, but I\’m sure that some store-owners immediately raised their prices for necessities like bottled water, baby food, and blankets. That\’s a different form of looting.
Tragically, looters show up after every disaster. They stripped whatever was left after the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, at the beginning of this year. They rampaged through parts of Montreal after the great ice storm of 1998. They scavenged poverty-stricken shacks in India after the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984.
During the Victorian era, commentators would have called this “the law of the jungle,” the survival of the fittest, as an extension of Darwin\’s theory of evolution. Tennyson coined the phrase, “nature red in tooth and claw.” It caught people\’s imaginations, but it distorts reality.
In nature, slavering predators do not constantly slaughter helpless victims. There are predators, it\’s true. And they do kill and eat other creatures. But only as much as they need. Where food is abundant, predators and prey co-exist peacefully – most of the time.
I have personally seen a cheetah sip from a stream while a gazelle strolled casually by. I have seen lions lolling in the sun while wildebeest grazed nearby. On Pacific reefs, comical grunts swim past a barracuda unmolested.
Visitors to Churchill, Manitoba, often see well-fed polar bears playing games with sled dogs.
Even in times of crisis, predators and prey flee en masse from a fire, a volcano, a flood… Not even a hyena stops to gorge on a fallen calf when its own life is threatened.
Only human hyenas fatten themselves during collective tragedies.
By the time it happens, it\’s too late
What can we do about it? Like the police and National Guard in New Orleans, not much. It\’s already too late. A permissive and affluent society has taught our hyenas that they\’re entitled to anything they can get. An unguarded store is like winning a lottery – riches you\’ve done nothing to earn fall into your hands.
TV has taught viewers that everyone is entitled to live in a five-bedroom, five-bathroom, three-car-garage suburban house. Or at least in a high-ceilinged loft with a view over the glittering city at night.
If this is the norm, then the opportunity to get a little closer by profiting from some retail merchant\’s misfortune must be an act of God. At last, Lady Luck smiles.
Besides, the looters argue, it will all be covered by insurance.
They ignore that fact that insurance costs money. All of us will pay for it, eventually.
Looting differs only in time scale from corporate predation. A mining company destroys a river to extract ten years worth of minerals. A computer manufacturer sacrifices the eyesight of a generation of young women for lower labour costs. A pharmaceutical giant hushes up negative results from product testing.
These too loot our collective well-being for private gain. It just takes longer than a kid smashing a jewellery store window.
We will not cure looting by throwing police at it. Our social furniture needs rebuilding. We have to make it clear – to our children, to our children\’s children, and most of all to ourselves – that there\’s no free ride, no quick win, no pie in the sky.
Streets paved with gold To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to jimt@quixotic.ca. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing.
If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website.
For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to ralphmilton@woodlake.com.
It\’s also worth pursuing Richard Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
At the root of looting, I believe, lies a distorted worldview. It equates heaven with the lifestyle of the wealthy.
But when the streets are suddenly paved with gold – or at least with stainless steel refrigerators and Tommy Hilfiger clothing – why not help yourself? Why wait for heaven?
Psychologist Daniel Goleman defined a willingness to wait as the primary sign of emotional maturity. He called it “deferred gratification.”
Looters show us that a significant part of our society still needs to grow up.
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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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