Ok Not to Care?

I saw this caption to an article on the Net about the floods in Thailand: “Thailand is 20% underwater, and is second-biggest hard drive producer after China. Now do you care about the floods?”

Provocative caption indeed. Do we always need to be told how something affects us before we care? The answer’s not that simple. Sometimes, there are too many other tragedies and accidents closer home for us to care about something far away. At other times, the news we see is too vague: we don’t know how many died. Or how many are stranded without food or medicines. And sometimes, it’s just too tiring and draining to feel or care about everybody’s problems.

Dan Ariely wrote about a county in the US where firefighters are not available on-call to everyone. Instead, the right to firefighters is only for those who an annual “premium”. So when a house (whose owner hadn’t paid the fee) caught fire, the firefighters refused to come douse the fire. They finally came only when the neighbour’s house caught fire (and only because the neighbor had paid the premium). And even then, they didn’t put out the fire in the first house. Sound harsh? Even cruel, perhaps?

Before you get all judgmental and moralistic, consider the bailouts for most of the Western world banks, and now even for countries like Greece. It raises the same question as the firefighter incident. Should we rescue or care for people who choose to not get insurance? Choose not to be careful? Choose to throw caution to the winds? After all, can you really be sure that they didn’t behave insanely simply because they expected to be saved by others later on?

Are those people relying on your kindness and compassion to bail them out for all their follies? Are they just exploiting your goodness? And if so, is it OK not to care and to just leave them to their fate?

Comments

  1. KumarNovember 5, 2011 at 6:50 PM

    Your blog presents a mixed sample of, shall I say, some clear and some confusing points about what is 'right' (or 'moral'). Since you are throwing the debate open to a wide range, instead of very clear focus of defined scope, it is more thought-provoking than many simpler debates.

    Take your Thailand flood example: That 'inducing sympathy or pushing for action to help during a calamity will be directed by some clear-cut business reason' is something that saddens me. I am not for it. I can feel and that is all that matters to me while deciding on such issues. I would like to reach out to the victims anywhere in the world in whatever way I can.

    Unfortunately, many people have lost their ability to feel. Can't we feel the misery of others and do whatever we can to alleviate their pain? At a non-calamity level too, I have to come to realize this: when people read the newspapers which report (pages and pages, and day after day) crimes and exploitation etc., many readers read them devoid of any feeling. I myself am never able to do so; shamelessly I admit that there are times when tears roll down my cheeks! Very often I also keep saying prayers for the suffering people when I read the newspaper. The point I am making is not about my reactions - I am only saying that we have to retain our ability for caring and our capacity to feel.

    That fundamental apart, I don't know what to say about firefighters serving only those who pay premiums for this protection/service and the financial bail-out that we see happening in Europe. In these situations, it certainly looks grayish rather than black and white. There must be plenty more along these lines, those you may not have touched upon.

    Now some other point that I am unhappy about: What do we do about our government pumping in millions and millions or rupees - the hard-earned tax payers money - to the eternally loss making Air India? The government is hell-bent upon sinking millions and millions more in the years to come. This is not even a bail-out - all of us know that the losses will increase further and further for at least a decade to come. Really no hope there. But the Indian government never felt any responsibility towards the educated middle class who are the only people worrying about such matters, whose blood the government sucks mercilessly; nobody else worries about such issues. The government feels certain that they can do in such matters whatever they please. There are no questions asked by anyone that they can't shirk away and forget instantly! If this is not immoral on the part of Indian government, I don't know what morality is!

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