	Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's

\| HOME \| WEB LOG \| COUNTRY WIKI \| COMMENT \| FORUM \| DOWNLOADS \| ABOUT \|

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 25-Dec-05
A year after tsunami, children survivors still feel traumatized

Web Log - December, 2005

A year after tsunami, children survivors still feel traumatized

And yet, on this Christmas day, the tsunami aftermath tells a story of hopefulness and renewal.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

"Imagine you're sitting with your father on a bicycle getting groceries in the market," says John Prewitt Diaz of the American Red Cross in New Delhi. "You see the wave, you try to go back to your house, but the wave is already covering the house. You'll never see your mother and brother again. These are the experiences that children had during the tsunami."

A year after the huge tsunami struck Southeast Asia, a UNICEF survey of 1633 children in four countries shows that most children who survived the tsunami still exhibit some signs of trauma. They lived in fear of another earthquake or tsunami, or they fear losing another loved one. One in five are not eating regularly. The majority feel lonely, but they're still able to describe themselves as happy and confident and are able to remain hopeful that the future holds promise for themselves and their families.

Adults are lonely too, and they have a special method for expressing their hopefulness about the future: There's a baby boom going on.

One young girl lost both her parents and al three siblings, when they were all washed away by the tsunami. Scared and alone, she married a man she hardly knew in a mass wedding in February and immediately became pregnant. "I'm the only person to survive, so I'm all alone," she says. "If I have a baby, I will have a friend."

Some older women are going to extremes. Some in their 40s are risking complications trying to get pregnant again, and some are trying to reverse sterilization procedures. One says, "I will wait for some time. If I am not pregnant again, I will kill myself."

Renewal

For these people as individuals, the loss, loneliness and desperation are traumatic.

But for the people as a society, it's a time of renewal. We can begin to see how a society renews itself after an enormous disaster, whether the disaster is a tsunami or a crisis war. (In Generational Dynamics, a crisis war is the worst, most genocidal kind of war.)

The tsunami was like a crisis war in terms of the amount of devastation it caused, particularly the loss of lives. But a tsunami lasts only one day, and a crisis war can last for months or years, and so a crisis war is much worse than a tsunami. Children growing up during a crisis war are surrounded by death, disease, poverty, starvation and homelessness for months or years at a time. They suffer a kind of "generational child abuse" and, like most abused children, they grow up into an entire generation of indecisive, nonconfrontational adults.

But even though the tsunami was much briefer than a crisis war, we're still seeing the same kinds of aftereffects, and we're seeing how a society renews itself after a disaster.

The children who survived will be affected by that experience every day for the rest of their lives, and will do everything in their power to protect themselves, their families and their communities from another tsunami.

When these children become adults, they'll insist on raising their own families safely far from the seaside. Those who become teachers will tell their students to do the same. Those who grow up to be architects or homebuilders will create buildings that can withstand tsunamis and will have "panic rooms" on the top, where people can run to escape a tsunami. Those that grow up to become political leaders will support laws that require "tsunami-safe buildings," as well as early warning systems. If a new tsunami occurs, there'll be few deaths since everyone will be prepared.

And that's not all. Just as America had a "Baby Boomer" generation after World War II, the tsunami-struck regions are also having a baby boom, led by mothers who feel lonely. These mothers will want to stay close to their children -- just as American mothers in the 1950s wanted to stay and home with their children.

The children of this new baby boom will form a new generation in a time of hope and optimism about the future. They'll quickly get sick and tired of hearing their parents talk about the "Great Tsunami of 2004." Their mothers will tell them to stay away from the sea shore, and they'll obey at first, but soon they'll see that the beaches are great, especially in the summer. As the population grows and real estate becomes more expensive, the children in this new generation will ignore the "tsunami-safe building" laws. If a new tsunami occurs at that time, these people will not be prepared, and the new tsunami will be as devastating as the tsunami of 2004.

This is cycle of life for a society. Individuals suffer, but their individual suffering renews and preserves the society as a whole, and makes it stronger.

We can see the same thing today in New Orleans. Under the slogan, "ReNew Orleans," the city is renewing and rebuilding itself. After the pain and loss and trauma inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, a whole "NewNew Orleans" is rising.

This cycle of destruction and renewal brings back a memory. When I was growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s, my mother commuted to New York City, where she worked. She had a love-hate relationship with New York, and she would often joke, "They ought to drop an atom bomb on New York and start all over."

Since she was joking I never really asked her what she meant, and I'll never know. But both my parents lost many family members in Europe in World War II, and she was probably thinking about something that happened in the war. Maybe she was thinking of Japanese cities that we had targeted with atom bombs, or maybe she was thinking of some city in Greece that had been devastated by the war, and now was rebuilding and renewing itself. She had the wisdom to know there are many disasters, but disasters always lead to rebirth and renewals.

People acquire wisdom through experiencing disasters. As a man gets older, and experiences more and more disasters, he gets wiser and wiser until he becomes a wise elder. At that point, he's wise enough to guide his children and other young people, so that they won't make the same mistakes he made, and suffer the same disasters. The same is true of an entire generation of people: As it becomes a generation of wise elders, it can guide the people in younger generations not to make the same mistakes. The elders can make sure that their children don't suffer the same disasters that they did.

The above paragraph sounds great, but it really contains an inherent contradiction: If the "generation of wise elders" guides the younger generation not to make the same mistakes, then the younger generations won't experience the same disasters, and so they won't become wise.

That's the way it works. It's like a dirty trick that our collective memories play on us. George Santayana's famous saying, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" is usually quoted by someone who's about to brag that he remembers something that other people have forgotten. But the hard truth is that Santayana's saying is a joke, because when you're talking about generations of people then it's impossible to remember the past, with the result that new generations are always condemned to repeat the past.

So this brings us to the final conclusions of our little Christmas message. First, remember that death is part of life. Second, remember that disasters are disastrous for individuals, but lead to an aftermath of hope and rebirth for the survivors and for society as a whole.

And third, in moments of quiet contemplation on Christmas day, as you think of parents and other loved ones who are no longer with you, try to remember the things they used to say, and try to understand anew the wisdom behind those sayings. You might gain some wisdom for yourself that will be invaluable to you during the next few difficult years. (25-Dec-05) Permanent Link
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Donate to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

Web Log Pages

Current Web Log

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 25-Dec-05 A year after tsunami, children survivors still feel traumatized

Renewal

Web Log Pages

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 25-Dec-05
A year after tsunami, children survivors still feel traumatized