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Date: | Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:19:29 -0500 |
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/Everything in Its Path, Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek
Flood/, Kai T. Erikson, 1976, 284p.
Katrina, 9/11, Chernobyl, Holocaust - these are subjects that have been
of interest to me since 9/11.
There seems to be something very compelling in the desire to help out
our fellow humans after a tragic disaster. More compelling, and
difficult I believe when the disaster was largely caused by humans, more
so our pain and the depth of our confusion than if it is solely a
natural disaster such as an earthquake or tsunami.
One of the issues that has been of concern to me in work to help folks
in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region is that we not show up as
'tourists of disaster'. A problem that we face when we make an attempt
to arm our own personal selves with the protection of an envelope of
distance from the danger of finding ourselves swallowed up and
overwhelmed by communal feelings that can quickly disable us when we
enter into a place where all things human and community have been made
detached and horrible.
This book, in making a very human reflection on the sociology of the
Buffalo Creek flood <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_Flood>
and the impact on human lives and community gives a very good vantage
from which to understand and help to manage our levels of human empathy
and to balance the need of our own mental health and our desire to
engage our empathy against the self-protective girding of our own
insensitivities.
As Kai Erikson makes clear when a population that has experienced
disaster is absorbed into a larger population the overall impact of
trauma is reduced. When a very large population is affected, as in the
Gulf Region, the occasional foray of small groups of the unaffected can
either be one in which the smaller group is overwhelmed and disturbed in
their own communal and individual ways, or that the smaller group comes
across to the region as insensitive to a deeper understanding of the
pain of the survivors.
This book helps the understanding. The overwhelming message in the end
is that we are all residents of Buffalo Creek.
][<
On their 2001 release White Blood Cells
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Blood_Cells_%28album%29>, The White
Stripes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Stripes> song "This
Protector" alludes to the Buffalo Creek Disaster from the federal mine
inspector point-of-view, through lyrics such as "300 people living out
in West Virginia/have no idea of all these thoughts that lie within ya".
--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://listserv.icors.org/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>
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