venta

While munching my lunch today, I hooked a back-issue of New Scientist from the vast horde of magazines which form gentle drifts across the table in our staff room.

That particular issue had caught my eye because of the cover blurb about falling in love changing women into men. The story detailed a study which suggested that the levels of hormones in men and women who desscribe themselves as having fallen in love alter to be more like that of the other sex. Frankly, it sounded like a bunch of rubbish to me.

However, further on in the magazine I ran into a comment piece talking about human behaviour in times of disaster. We all now how humans behave in the face of crisis, right ? They run around and panic and lose all common sense. Sheep to a man. Everyone knows that. Hollywood knows it, and treats us to scenes of absolute carnage every time a natural disaster threatens. US and UK governemnts seem to know it - certainly, if Preparing For Emergencies is anything to go by, we need to be repeatedly instructed to use common sense and not to panic. According to the article, both the US and UK governments have been forming their what-to-do-in-emergencies plans in a very top-down way: people potentially nowhere near the disaster will form the plans, and the local people are completely edited out of the equation. They are to be contained, and in no event involved, or even necessarily informed.

So far, so good. Except, the article goes on to explain, people actually tend not to panic. They tend to get their act together really rather quickly, start trying to sort things out, and generally help each other. All that's best about a community tends to swing into force. Consider, said the article, Britain in the Blitz.

Indeed, I was thinking, but that was years ago. And somehow the world seems to me to be getting a lot less sensible. Would people today act with the same Blitz spirit ? The article continued citing examples - from the amazing recovery (at least economically) of Hiroshima, to the behaviour of people during and after the attack on the World Trade Centre.

Ah. I thought. Fair point. The twin towers were only knocked over a few years ago. Yet all reports suggested then that people helped each other out, did what they could, and generally pitched in in a supportive manner. The write of the article claimed that he had not yet heard of an injured or disabled person involved in the WTC disaster who did not report being assisted by colleagues or strangers.

Much smaller scale disasters, like the Boscastle flooding, seem to indicate the same thing. People will help each other out, and utterly fail to run round like screaming idiots.

When flooding, or earthquakes, or other disasters strike it is often local people who begin (and then continue) search and rescue missions before even the emergency services arrive. Individuals are hailed as heroes, but still the idea persists that people will default to mob mentality as a whole.

So, what of these reports of carnage and looting ? At the moment, I believe the flooding in Haiti has resulted in something of the sort of disorder we might expect to see. I'm not sure, though, that I really think that's quite comparable. The citizens of Haiti have been living in poverty, facing civil unrest, famine and uncertainty and now the flood has destroyed a large proportion of what little they did have. There's not a huge number of sensible courses left open to them. Their disaster is a last straw, and while looting probably doesn't help, it's really quite understandable.

I found myself agreeing with the writer of the article. People - at least those living in reasonable comfort and safety - will, when faced with an imminent crisis, generally show all that's good about human nature. I'm sure there are opportunists, but as a generalisation people will cope, and they will help. Yet the governments write them out of disaster plans as irrelevant and incapable. The Public must stay at home, be cosseted with warnings not to panic, and let the nice, big officials sort it all out.

People can be stupid, selfish, stubborn, destructive, any number of things. But just occasionally they can also be noble, reliable, brave and coolheaded. And I think we deserve a bit of credit for that.