Tsunami: a wake-up call

The disaster caused by the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean has - momentarily - awakened us to the truth. The earth that sustains us will also destroy us. Probably for the first time in history, humanity has seen for whom the bell tolls.

There is hope: governments - some already cashing in, alas, on the favorable publicity - are mobilizing resources and organizing rescue and relief efforts. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of private organizations are making all-out efforts to go where they are needed. And millions of people all over the world spontaneously and eagerly are reaching out to alleviate the plight of desperate survivors. At last, a realization of human equality, a true expression of human solidarity.

Now we must fan the spark to ignite the flame for a world of compassion.
Now we see as through a glass darkly. But when we love our neighbors as we love ourselves, then history - the nightmare from which humanity seeks to awake - can come to an end and our work on earth will have been completed.
Then too, the Holocaust will have found closure.

Let us not see this as a utopian dream, but as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

But we must force ourselves to stay awake, lest we slip back into a coma.
We must not return to the status quo ante as we have so many times in the past, after genocides, after wars to end all wars.

Our awakening must be a moral awakening. There is no technical fix for what ails us. Ours is a moral problem as old as Genesis: "Am I my brother's keeper?"

We must be practical. We have our work cut out for us.

How much of the disaster was preventable and how much more promptly and efficiently could the rescue and relief work have been launched if the rich and resourceful part of the world had different priorities, if the so-called "free-market" economy, an amoral force that dominates and manipulates the world for the benefit of the few, did not reign supreme?

Always and everywhere the poor, the ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-housed are bearing the brunt of war, famine, disease and natural calamities. Millions of children die each year of malaria and dysentery. A billion people in the world are without pure water. Every four seconds someone dies of hunger. If the resources invested in the war-making machinery, designed to protect the rich and powerful all over the world, were used for the benefit of all, it would change the face of the earth.

We must demand planetary disarmament.

We must create a planetary community.
We must demand the full implementation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And if the Tsunami does not bring us to our senses, if it does not open our eyes to the human condition, if it fails to teach us how to live, what will?
And if not now, when?
And if not us, who?