(The Nationalist, 24 October 2003)
We live in strange times. There is a peculiar mixture of technological failure and the need for the human touch.
Recently, there was a heat wave in France which resulted in the deaths of some 10,000 people; air-conditioning systems had been unable to cope. The good side of it, if one may use such a term, was that everyone praised hospital staff for the level of care they gave the patients. They may not have cured, but they cared, and that counted. The bad side of it was that several hundred bodies of the dead lay for weeks in refrigerated trucks, with no one claiming them. Some, it seemed, had living relatives who were away on holidays but had not made an enquiry. They were buried in unmarked graves.
At about the same time, there was a power blackout in the United States and Canada which left 50 million people without electricity for a few days. There was talk of a “system failure” whereby one failure triggered another, and then another, and so on. Maybe, or was that a smoke screen hiding un-admitted human error?
The good side of the experience was the absence of the mass looting and criminality that accompanied a similar blackout in New York in 1975. People were patient, helped each other and generally bore the difficulties with humour. Some said this new, positive reaction was a by-product of 11th September, that people had learned the need and value of human qualities over the usual ones of getting work done and making money.
Also at the same time, computers began to be afflicted by “viruses” with strange names like Blaster and Worm. (Mine was unaffected because the viruses targeted new software – there are advantages in being an old crock!) But in England, a man living on social welfare was sent a notice from bailiffs that he would face eviction, deprivation of property, a fine and perhaps jail if he did not pay outstanding arrears on his local property taxes. Then the discovery was made that it was all due to a computer error; the notice should never have been sent. But, in the meantime, the man had committed suicide.
High tech and materialism have their Achilles heel. They will never make redundant the need for compassion. What sees people through hard times is caring for each other.