Disaster porn

Disaster porn | Daily Tribune

The way they obsessively monitor days before, on the day itself, and the days after a disaster strikes betrays a perversity. It’s as if they take great pleasure in seeing and hearing about the ravages of nature’s relentless fury.

Sadly, many of us unknowingly indulge in it, especially if one is watching the unfolding disaster from relative comfort — what is now known as disaster porn.

And judging from the images and sounds churned out of the suffering brought about by recent super typhoons “Tino” and “Uwan,” this was no different.

But while disaster porn in this era of social media and globalization is indeed contemptible, it is also vital.

People do need to be informed about the well-being of others. In fact, nation-states require ways of relaying the misfortunes of community members so that the larger community can “collectively decide whether to intervene and how to allocate resources to aid those less fortunate members.”

So, despite disaster porn being patently disturbing, disasters do encourage valuable reflection and learning.

As such, “encouraging an awareness of the vicissitudes of fate helps to combat the common tendency to blame victims of chance and inequality for their own misfortunes, and to view one’s own good fortune as the special individual talent unaffected by larger social forces or privileges. In this way, so-called disaster porn may prove itself to be more of a virtue than a vice,” says a study on the issue.

Our struggle in showing empathy for the sufferings of others, as such, prods us to clearly see how Filipino politicians dote, abuse, and act out their own individual take on disaster porn.

So much so that it gives meaning to our raving shouts of “enough is enough” and to our contemptuous curses against corrupt Filipino politicians.

How our typical corrupt politicians interact with disaster porn has many iterations and is well documented on legacy and social media.

But for starters, I bet we’re all familiar with our boiling disgust on what’s done politically with the ubiquitous relief packs meant as immediate aid to the cowering thousands, either sheltering in place or in evacuation centers.

To the effect that young aid worker Issa Barte’s striking questions aired a year ago resonates these days after “Tino” and “Uwan.”

Ms. Barte grimly though correctly asked: “I still can’t help but feel they (politicians) see crisis as a silly game to win. The floods are back; who can get the most publicity? The typhoon hit; who can stamp their face on the most relief bags? The people are hungry, who can take the most pictures giving cash handouts? And at the end of all that, what are we left with?”

Precisely nothing, of course. But for our shamelessly corrupt politicians it’s an early investment for the next election.

Beyond the immediate aid, of course, are proposed moves towards workable long-term solutions. Now, our politicians are armed with all the resources to make for a meaningful difference. Yet, they do nothing.

Besides the obvious answers of greed and incompetence, our politicians are also perhaps addicted to what noted writer Ninotchka Rosca termed as the “shiny object syndrome (SOS),” another perversity.

SOS is the psychological term for the “tendency to be entranced by the new, the big, the costly, the super expensive…like high-tech, super dams, a thousand windmills, fancy subdivisions on mountain slopes…(while) neglecting the basics like canals, sidewalks, mangroves, reforestation and zoning.”