Haiti and Human Apathy

It is difficult, if you are a genuine individual, to not feel a sharp twinge of pain when you view the pictures of the devastation in Haiti. I shedded some silent tears when I viewed a photo on the BBC which depicted thousands of dead bodies scattered in a city square. At breakfast that morning, over pancakes and hash browns, Sean and I were touching upon the subject. Why does it take a natural disaster to bring about such outcry from one's fellow human community? That is a heavy question that is difficult to answer- and it is so complex that it can't possibly be answered. However, hypothesis can be made and here are a few of mine...

Firstly, why do we finally feel a sense of being part of a global, human community, only when a massive disaster and tragedy occurs. Then, to take it further, why do we get so gung- ho about it, and then two weeks later, forget about it completely? Well, firstly, I am under the belief that society is breeding a community of very apathetic people. The mentality stems from various things. Firslty, I think it is that we, physically, exist in a daily world of disconnectedness. Think about it, for a minute. After your day at work, do you go and chat with your neighbors? Do you go out and communicate with people? Or do you sit at home, watch TV, or putz around on the computer? You could argue that- yes I am communicating! I'm catching up with my friends via email, facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. This lacks a sense of true human connectedness- it lacks the small nuances that occur during human interaction- the communication signals that come from facial expression and body language. These are missing with computer interaction.
Now, what about our gold-fish like empathetic outcries? Why do we forget these tragedies as quickly as they occur? To me, this is an easy question to answer. We, as a society, are fast paced and instantaneous as a whole. This is a good thing, because our waiting period is short, and gratification is immediate. However, it also means that things are short lived in our life. We go through things quickly, bits of news, coffee, life, and get so accustomed to it that when something truly important comes about, we treat it as we treat everything else. It goes through our system like our daily lattes and we move on. Haiti? What happened there? Wasn't that like a YEAR ago? (spoken by a person two weeks after the fact...) This is something that we as a society need to address. Of course, it could be argued that this short attention span is one of the reasons while there is still ongoing genocide in the world, disasters in oppressive regimes like Burma, and endless suffering in our own country. It's almost as if we, as a whole, have severe ADD, and that is a real problem. It is not something that is an easy fix either, because it requires shaking people out of apathy, and that takes a natural disaster to even being the process..

A final note to consider is that of prevention. How can we prevent such disasters from happening, at least in the part of human action? What kind of buildings can be built? What can we have set in place in case of such an emergency? I am not certain that anything can be put in place. However, I think it is something that should be given a great deal of thought. Millions in aid after the fact does not stop the loss of life that occurs before that instant.