Countless
At some point numbers become meaningless; they are just too big to wrap one's mind around. The death toll in the quake and tsunami in Southeast Asia has reached that point: various sources give it as between 20,000 and 24,000 dead with thousands still missing, and many areas as yet unreached so the tolls there remain unknown. That's about the population of the town I used to live in . . . but I never saw my whole town's population in one place, so even that doesn't make it visual.
What does make it visual is photos. Most of the news photos I've seen so far have focused on a single family or small group (and so far I've seen dead children, looking like they are asleep, but few photos of dead adults). The only photo I've seen so far that hints at what it must be like to be overwhelmed with death in these places is this one (which, if you read the comments on Boring Diatribe, you've already seen me mention): my Spanish is not good, but roughly I think it says this is a bird's eye view of the Marina Beach in Madras, India, where what used to be sand is now a mire of debris and dead bodies.
If you saw the 9/11 documentary by the Naudet brothers, you'll recall the pop-pop-popsound of falling bodies hitting the building and ground, and the news photos of people falling and leaping from the burning buildings. It was hard then to wrap the mind around how horrifying the situation must have been on those upper floors for people to decide that an 80-story plunge to certain death was a desirable alternative . . . and make the leap. Likewise, try to wrap your mind around seeing a 30-foot-high, wide-as-the-eye-can-see wall of water rise up out of a sun-kissed sea and sweep away your community, your loved ones . . . wade through the carnage, the detritus and bodies, looking for your loved ones, hoping not to find them among the corpses littering the ground and trees . . .
It is beyond numbers. It is beyond words. Maybe beyond pictures, too.
Easier to imagine how one might help. As we did on 9/11. The New York Times has a list of aid organizations you can contribute to. If this country is as great as we claim to be, as we aspire to be, as I hope deep in our hearts we are, then perhaps the amount we give to help will be beyond counting, too.
Addendum: Antonius imagines a perfect world. Would that it were so.
What does make it visual is photos. Most of the news photos I've seen so far have focused on a single family or small group (and so far I've seen dead children, looking like they are asleep, but few photos of dead adults). The only photo I've seen so far that hints at what it must be like to be overwhelmed with death in these places is this one (which, if you read the comments on Boring Diatribe, you've already seen me mention): my Spanish is not good, but roughly I think it says this is a bird's eye view of the Marina Beach in Madras, India, where what used to be sand is now a mire of debris and dead bodies.
If you saw the 9/11 documentary by the Naudet brothers, you'll recall the pop-pop-popsound of falling bodies hitting the building and ground, and the news photos of people falling and leaping from the burning buildings. It was hard then to wrap the mind around how horrifying the situation must have been on those upper floors for people to decide that an 80-story plunge to certain death was a desirable alternative . . . and make the leap. Likewise, try to wrap your mind around seeing a 30-foot-high, wide-as-the-eye-can-see wall of water rise up out of a sun-kissed sea and sweep away your community, your loved ones . . . wade through the carnage, the detritus and bodies, looking for your loved ones, hoping not to find them among the corpses littering the ground and trees . . .
It is beyond numbers. It is beyond words. Maybe beyond pictures, too.
Easier to imagine how one might help. As we did on 9/11. The New York Times has a list of aid organizations you can contribute to. If this country is as great as we claim to be, as we aspire to be, as I hope deep in our hearts we are, then perhaps the amount we give to help will be beyond counting, too.
Addendum: Antonius imagines a perfect world. Would that it were so.
posted by Maines at 11:04 PM
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