Thoughts on suffering and disasters

Victorian death toll 108 and rising! I am feeling very, very sad and little guilty that I feel  so much more for  communities I have had some contact with. I guess that's human nature and I suppose we just couldn't go on if we had the same level of grief for everyone. Still it has raised, for me, the whole issue of how 100+ lives here in Victoria affects me so much more that a whole bunch more in another country especially when I don't know any of them. I know a little of it is about the sort of death they must have experienced but, I sure deep down in all of us, it is also about "my kind". I wonder if that's a primitive survival reaction, or are we just pretty well inured to deaths in the third world.

I have been struggling with this issue for a long time. How many Palestinians is one Israeli worth?  How many Afghanis or Iraqis should be allowed to die to protect how many Americans, Englishmen or Australians? What dictatorships should be protected because they are our allies, whilst we destroy other countries because their leaders are "dictators". How can we condone torture  when it serves our interests and still think we can hold the moral high ground over others? How can we  profess to believe in democracy and refuse to deal with elected leaderships we disagree with? Why are the actions of the powerless called "terrorism" and those of the powerful, self defence?

I know it's not as simple as that. I know some people are motivated by ideology alone, but   just as the "terrorists" take innocent lives, so do the actions of powerful governments, except when the powerful take the lives, the innocent somehow become reduced to "collateral damage" and it's called "protecting democracy".

Lets not forget tens of thousands of Indonesians were murdered and our governments knew of and condoned those actions because those people were apparently "communists". Let's not forget Nelson Mendela used to be labelled  a communist. It seems to me "terrorist" is the new "communist"- a convenient label used to dehumanise those we disagree with or fear, and to ignore the real problems to be solved. I'm not saying there aren't real threats but there is also the very real danger of ignoring great human need because we are too quick with the labels.

So here I am back at the beginning. When I grieve over some unknown lives more than I do over others, am I just participating in a process which reduces the world to "them" and "us"- "us" to be valued, supported and protected, "them" to be given a little charity if it doesn't cost too much, and never to our own detriment.