I've asked permission to share an excerpt from an essay I wrote for a book coming out this October, More Space: Nine Antidotes to Complancy in Business.
It's essentially about the importance of empathy in business. There's a section there that's particular relevant these days because I see a lot of blame being heaped on the victims themselves. Rather than giving any linklove or googlejuice to these examples, I'll say that last Saturday as I prepare for my trail run at my favorite preserve, I overhear two women talking about Katrina as they stretch. They sum up: "Well, they had enough warning."
There is enough of an economic and emotional toll taken on by our own self-condemnation as it is. I know this from personal experience.
Let them know we're not bums. We have houses. Our houses were destroyed. We have jobs. It's not our fault that we didn't have cars to leave," Shatonia Thomas, 27, said as she walked near New Orleans' convention center five days after the storm, still trapped in the destruction with her children, ages 6 and 9. - "Hurricane Hit the Poor the Hardest", September 5, 2005, Palo Alto Daily News
I wanted to share two compelling pieces of empathetic writing I stumbled across last night. I saved a site to del.icio.us and I couldn't help but notice a post "Being Poor" by writer John Scalzi which obviously struck a chord. At the time, del.icio.us had 206 copies. And it has garnered over 350 comments and counting. Read the whole Being Poor piece (and the comments are extraordinary as well). After the resounding response, John shares a bit more of the back-story.
So, yes: I grew up poor. Now you know. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of the fact of having been poor; it is what it is. But I will note that having been poor in some sense never leaves you. I was and am appalled that so many people were basically abandoned to the hurricane and the floods largely because they were poor; in another place and time and under not dissimilar circumstances, that could have been me as a child or people that I knew... You don't have to have been poor to be outraged at what happened with Katrina and its aftermath, but if you have been it provides an extra dimension of horror.
In comments on the original, he also writes:
I think you've misdiagnosed the aim of this entry. It's not designed to be a pityfest to make the poor feel better about themselves for being poor, or to foment some sort of class struggle, or to be used as a reason for the poor not to attempt to better themselves, or to be some guilty liberal apologia from a middle-class white guy. It's simply meant to evoke some of what it's like to be poor in this country, based on some personal experiences and the experiences of people I know. For various reasons, I thought it to be necessary at this point in time.
Technorati tags: Flood Aid, Hurricane Katrina
Credits: Flickr photo by reiscakes
It is the continuity of socio-economic history that enables the repetition of much of the disasters of history.
The ironical thing is, it was due to wealth being dammed up in particular sectors of society that enabled the dams that broke to do its worse.
As i'm inclined to say, Katrina was the aftermath of the disaster that is generally mistaken for the American Dream.
Very few consider the number of lives claimed by this true disaster on a daily basis whether it is in the form of abject dejection or lethal injection. If that number was counted, it would make Katrina little more than a passing cloud of the most meagre of proportions.
http://the-heretic.blogspot.com/2005/09/charity-kills.html
Posted by: Inquisitor | Sep 17, 2005 at 03:56 AM