What natural disasters tell us about societies
The natural disasters we’ve seen recently around the world have shown us much about the communities in which they’ve occurred. The images emerging from Japan, New Zealand and Australia as they’ve faced earthquakes, tsumanis, floods and fires stands on stark contrast to the mainstream media stories that suggests people of the world are not willing to work together. Some of the widely reported natural events in the past few years include Hurricane Katrina; fires across Victoria, floods across Queensland and Victoria; the earthquakes in Christchurch and Japan all of which have shown much about those societies. A few years ago an earthquake in Turkey right on the border with Greece highlighted the willingness of so called ‘combatants’ to come together to assist others. With more localised large scale incidents we get to see in essence, the true selves of the societies impacted by the event.
There is a saying that says ‘we learn much about ourselves in times of crisis’. The images on TV of Japanese people waiting patiently in line to enter a supermarket for upto seven hours says much about the Japanese people’s resilience and their understanding that this is an event that demands an understanding of the widespread impact. The images of people from across the world flying into Christchurch to assist (along with local students digging mud out of strangers homes); people in Australia driving or flying hundreds of kilometers just to get in and lend a hand shows conclusively societies with a collective focus.
What seems to emerge from these images is an assessment of resilience within the community. It appears to me that societies with a stronger focus on ‘us’ and a lesser focus on ‘me’ seem far more able to deal with the widespread devastation of a natural disaster and it could be reasonably anticipated that they’ll also bounce back quicker albeit allowing for a long range need for rebuilding.
It might seem a pity that we need to experience a sudden natural disaster to reveal our true selves. I’m thankful that for the large part in many societies, our true selves seem to be more often about ‘us’ and less about ‘me’. My thoughts are very much with those facing and still dealing with these recent events
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
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Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
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