Human Benevolence On Display

It has been over a week since a 7.0 earthquake devastated the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere. The Republic of Haiti is a Caribbean country that borders alongside the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola. The earthquake occurred at 4:53pm Eastern time on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 and has since been in the hearts and minds of the global population. It has been estimated by the International Red Cross that 3 million people have been affected and on the 15th of January, the Haitian Interior Minister, Paul Antoine Bien-Aime' , anticipates that this disaster would eventually have claimed between 100,000 to 200,000 people. As terrible as the news has been, I am hoping for a moment to focus on the power of the human response to tragedy.

This without a doubt has been a decade of tragedies. Some of them have been intentionally committed by the hands of terrorists who seem to stop at nothing to destroy what they hate. To America, September 11th, 2001 is still fresh in our memories. Though America was hit hard, most of these attacks have been more focused within European Nations. London had a shock of their own on July 7, 2005 when a group of religious zealots placed three homemade bombs crafted of organic peroxide-based devices on three separate underground trains claiming many lives. Then there have been disasters from natural causes that we will never forget in our lifetime. Some would say they have been directly caused by anthropogenic global warming but it isn't easy to label them as such. There was the Asian Tsunamis, New Orleans' Hurricane Katrina, and the tropical cyclone Nargis that struck Burma and many more that have all happened within this decade. One thing that unites these horrific events mentioned is the amount of help the victims received from outside their borders.

Human Benevolence has been on display and it has not gone unnoticed. We have all seen the selfless acts from the men and women who serve in the National Guard, the International Red Cross, and a plethora of governmental and private organizations who have risked their own lives to salvage it for others. Haitians are seeing this effort in action as I type this out. Countless people from many different countries have come to together to raise money, pull survivors from the wreckage and to operate on the injured. Governments that never speak to each other are now working together to help relieve a people who are suffering. And let us not forget the businesses and corporations who have donated their products and services. Corporate entities like Walmart, Bank of America, Kellog, Western Union, Go Daddy, Coca Cola and Amazon have all pledged to donate hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to support the relief effort of the Red Cross. Religious groups from Christian, Muslim, Judaism to humanists are all collectively doing their part as well.

There is a lesson to be learned here. We all have the ability to step aside from what would normally divide us, whether it be politics or religion, to perform the greatest of acts of compassion towards the men and women in such desperate need. Globalization, love it or hate it, if not directly responsible we can at least see it is at least indirectly responsible for this mass coexistence. A century ago, our international relations would not be where it is today. Contrary to popular belief, times really are getting better. More peaceful is our world today in regard to human relations. Sure we have numerous problems ahead of us, but times like this give me hope that we can get the job done. Through tragedy, the human race can come together, and my heart sings it's praises tonight.