As we see the devastation in Haiti unfold around us, what is your reaction? Deep sadness? Frustration? Or a burning desire to do something about it?

For me, the great sadness drives the need to change things to improve this situation in the future. We might not be able to stop disasters, but we can sure as hell make things better.

I appreciate that it might be insensitive to discuss solutions while people are still searching through the rubble. It’s certainly a “man thing” to think about answers instead of showing empathy. But let me assure you that my heart is with the people in Haiti. It is with this I wish to pay tribute.

Fighting God

Building with natural disasters in mind is probably the area we currently put the most effort into, but it still falls far short of the mark. It is improving, but at a heel dragging rate restrained by the monetary system. Building to last will never be an incentive when profit potential is unlimited under the repeat sales system. Also the monetary system generally demands immediate pay off. There is little profit in safety, and even less in “just on the off chance” features.

Rethinking construction from a person perspective would drive the focus in an entirely new direction and enable us to explore more disaster enduring solutions.

The Person Perspective

Until we reach the possibly unreachable goal of disaster-proofing our world, or we stumble on another technique for survival such as mind-uploading or sealed virtual reality, there will always be a need to improve post-event rescue efforts. The unforgivable incompetency shown in the dealing of Katrina, the Tsunami and the current crisis are the perfect illustration of this.

Science and technology are increasingly creating new robotics, imaging techniques, and medical equipment. All we can hope is that this can be improved faster. Eradication of the current monetary system can go some way to improving education. This way more people can enter more appropriate fields such as engineering and science, instead of chasing dollars on a trading room floor, or trying to become a pop star when they have no interest in music, to give just a couple of examples.

With a growth in more practical sciences and technology created by a society with the desire to apply knowledge in more useful and benevolent ways, there will be a drive to improve technology in ways that save lives.

With this new focus, more scientific effort will be put into understanding, predicting and preventing disaster, as well as more efficient measures to save more people when it does happen.

More Emphasis on Life

The key is to put more emphasis on life – on survival. We see natural disasters often, and more often than not, are so desensitised that we ignore them. If they’re big enough (what is big enough? 1000 deaths? 10,000 deaths?) to make an emotional impact on us, we might send a cheque and get on with our lives. But whatever happens, we always still accept these deaths as inevitable.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

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If this hits a chord with you, please read an old article of mine: Just Another Death?.