How come Tonto, Robin and the Sundance Kid could all tell the future?

They were sidekicks.

There is no dark,

There is no light.

No loss no, gain,

It’s all the same.

One taste of joy,

Forevermore.

In yours and mine,

Her eyes will shine.

Happy New Year, David

x

Having just posted on the vicariously uplifting nature of TV crisis coverage, I went to analyse my web stats. It seems a lot of people who have come to freedomforall.net recently have been seeking exactly the kind of video uplift I was discussing. Always one to give the crowd what they seek:

Cheese & Crackers has links including the following to video footage: Tsunami Video Download Here

PunditGuy has also maintained sterling service for TV addicts.

Keywords: Video, Tsunami, Earthquake, Crisis, Indian Ocean, Footage, Uplift

Compassion fatigue, mass hysteria and all manner of psychological explanations are offered for aspects of our group behaviour towards crisis and disaster. Watching the news of the Tsunami and Earthquake unfold from the Indian Ocean this week and hearing the reflections of others there is a sense in which people are uplifted by the filmic nature of the scene.

Perhaps it is the case that watching such grand events on television we are taken on an emotional rollercoaster which leaves our brains soaked with endorphins. Hearing the cries of a woman whose boyfriend was swept from beside her on the beach. Watching the survival struggle of a grandmother and her one remaining grandchild then hearing that the other seven members of their family are known to be dead. Seeing mile after mile of wrecked coastline piled with bodies. One can not help but experience strong emotional feelings and reactions when confronted by these things.

Vicariously uplifted by TV’s grubby visuals people have been noticeably lacking the usual seasonal affects of depression. In their shock, horror, amazement and grief at what they see, the endorphins rolling around the nervous system are replacing the real highs of a life lived in person. At what point does watching the news switch from being a genuine interest in our world to living through the medium of other people’s lives.

This question, though highlighted by recent events and reactions, is a serious one for western societies. When people spend more time watching TV than talking with other real people they have truly given up genuine living and switched their allegiance to the world of second-hand highs. Most people in our society probably meet this criteria. TV is without doubt the modern opiate of the masses. Over the last week many people seem to have been mainlining pure heroin.

Aid requests from the different countries affected by the recent Tsunami have poured in. In most the need is for clean water, food, medicine, and shelter for the survivors. Bodies are being put unidentified into mass graves. There is not much call for aid for the dead.

Thailand has always been different. The Thai authorities have requested forensic experts to help identify the dead, body bags and temporary chillers/morgues for storage. The death toll in Thailand is somewhat lower, and probably more acurate than most, at 1,500 dead and the same number missing. Of these some eighty per cent are western tourists.

It strikes me that in the undifferentiated nature of this event, to be dealing with such different classes of corpse says an unfortunate lot about our world. Some of the dead have lived in a part of the world where they will use more resources in a year than their holiday hosts will in a lifetime. These corpses will be frozen and shipped home to have expensive funerals. Their deaths will consume huge amounts of resources too. The less worthy will be dropped from the back of trucks into big collective holes dug and covered by industrial machines or by even hand.

From before the waves hit, for the Thai authorities, coping with this disaster has been a case of managing the western sensibility. Mistakenly, the Thai authorities decided one hour before the wave hit not to publicise the oncoming deluge. Largely this decision was taken for fear of what the news would do to tourism. These facts will clearly make things far worse for the tourist industry than had they got the warning out and saved several hundred or thousands of the victims.

For the poor survivors coping with these events will be a long and difficult road but the human spirit is brave and the road can be followed. It does not matter if the skin of the body is pink or a shade of brown the brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and children of the dead feel the same pain. Those among us who have suffered losses now share something with specific members of the third world poor nobody could have imagined.

Tsunami or tidal wave. The secret to the human tragedy that resulted is in the word which is Japanese. Tsunami are most commonly a phenomena of the Pacific. Higher levels of seismic activity than in the Indian Ocean and recent tragedy have lead to an early warning system through the Pacific Rim. Had this extended to the countries involved yesterday many lives may have been saved.

The dead, including the western tourists, have now done something that ten minutes of education could have done for them: warned everyone that when the water runs out to sea you run inland and uphill fast. At least, the everyone who has access to media, which is, lets face it, everyone.

With satellites and internets and global blah blah, a tidal wave, or earthquake likely to cause one, could be publicized effectively even in relatively deprived areas. I wonder how many of the devastated beach bars in Thailand had internet access for example? Probably lots. Why was nothing, even cobbled together, in place? Had no academic proposed a global warning system using all channels and resources over internet technologies?

My neighbour has since yesterday provided a growing sense of incredulity in me. “An Earthquake on Boxing day?”, he asked when told of the news. Why should this be less likely on Boxing day than any other?, I find myself wondering. It is not as if this false, fake, plastic, glutinous, uncivilized, uniquely British (not any sort of compliment in my eyes) “holiday” has any religious, spiritual, planetary, physical or other known reason to be “special”.

More than twenty thousand people will have died in the tsunami, or tidal waves, which hit South East Asia from Sri Lanka to Malaysia today. The final death toll will never be known acurately because of the nature of the disaster and the nature of the places it has hit.

Initial estimates have rapidly climed to over 6,300 (Reuters) and will continue climibing all day. The worst hit areas are still out of contact however and many of the nations concerned habitually underestimate disaster as a slur to national pride.

Some two thousand kilometres of Indian coastline have been hit by waves up to six metres high which have passed sometimes a kilometre inland. Half of Sri Lanka is underwater. Whole Islands have been inundated in areas packed with seasonal western tourists.

Goat Gifts have been the season’s must have, reports the Guardian. Being that rag it refers to the gift of choice amongst chatterers. Giving a goat to help a poor and needy person is very politically now. One rock star is expected to receive dozens of goats from adoring fans.

At the glut-fest which is Christmas, as at all other times of the year, the poor, hungry and dying of the resource-poor world - the “roadkill of Capitalist/Consumerist Juggernaut” - need our help. It has become politically correct to gift such help this christmas. The gift of the moment, the goat - living, provides milk , makes manure for gardening, disposes of waste and cuts grass. It is one gift among many in the catalogues and websites of charities.

But should we really be ‘giving them’ to each other, even in name? The egotism this shows horrifies. That we would not give the gift to the poor person if we did not know the relatively wealthy one we were “giving” the gift of their goat to is of little interest to the people milking goats today. We need to look at our motives, timing and follow up, however. We need honesty and simplicity in giving, not cross-purposing and marketeering.

Laying in a floatation tank was a new and very pleasant experience. Laying in ten inches of water dosed with seven hundred pounds of Epsom salts and in total darkness and warmth reminiscent of the womb, the body and mind float freely.

The Italian assistant who had answered my telephone call earlier had turned out to be attractive and pleasant in person as well as on the telephone. We had casually flirted as she showed me the controls of my temporary womb.

As the end of my first one hour session neared my mind floated to flirtation. How, I asked myself, can I ask her on a date? As a four-year celibate this is not as casual question as it might at first seem. The relaxing effects of the bath soon wore off as my mind began turning.

Then I had that ‘Eureka’ moment.”Have you got a boyfriend?” I heard myself asking her. “No” she replied, smiling sweetly on the videotape running in my head. “Only, if you haven’t, I thought I could give you one for Christmas.” I heard myself brazenly continue.

Life is never as easy as the videotape running in my head. I shyly and awkwardly left the floatation centre feeling strangely spaced out like I was on drugs. The thought of actually saying anything even vaguely resembling the videotape filled me with fear.

Oh well, looks like I shall enter my fifth year of celibacy in 2005. My mind, though hating of Christmas, loves the renewal of the year passing. I often make large or small resolutions to mark the new year and the fact that everything is always changing. This year I resolve to learn to speak Italian.

Once again around Sixteen Thousand children around the world will celebrate the pagan midwinter festival of the northern hemisphere by dying. Some people claim the festival to be called “Christmas” and to be the celebration of Christ’s birth.

I wonder if the dying children wonder about the other portion of humans who will eat too much food and exchange meaningless gifts made from dwindling resources that could have saved them. I wonder if they understand that it’s O.K. - this celebration is about their saviour Jesus, they do not need food for they have been fed the highest meal.

Christ, from what we know of him and were he alive to witness this sick society, would most probably be mightily angered and be liable to turn tables over and such. Understandable, given the general bastardisation of his teachings which prevails and the perversion this festival represents.

As a man who sought peace for all, Christ would surely understand the suffering of the dying child, the child who has no food or no drugs to cure a simple illness. Would he understand the egotistic glutony of “Christmas”?

Merry Christmas