stevesbets

I have been asked by multiple people to blog about the tragedy in Haiti. Rather than offer my opinion, I would like to send you to a New York Times link that I totally agree with here

My favorite passage: Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

At the time that article was written 45-50k people had died from the earthquake, presently the death toll is around 150k. That is a devastating number for a fairly routine earthquake. I get depressed with humanity when I think that if people were a bit more intelligent and a bit less corrupt such tragedies could be substantially diminished. Thinking about human failures can twist my mind horribly and endlessly so I mostly just hope that people get lucky and horrors like this earthquake can be mostly avoided.