#ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmm: Why is there no looting in Japan?
Had social media been around when I was coming straight from high school, there is NO DOUBT in my mind I would have immediately jumped on board. For izzles - I love that I can be such a fly on the wall and explore human nature in its purest, and rawest form through execution, and not what people merely say they will do; we can find out in real time what they are ACTUALLY doing. Fucking brilliant! Greatest time to be alive. ever. ever. ever. ever. ever. Learning so much in this space! Blows my mind, every.single.day. Someone just tweeted this article out, and speaks to the same effect. READ!
Per telegraph.co: The landscape of parts of Japan looks like the aftermath of World War Two; no industrialised country since then has suffered such a death toll. The one tiny, tiny consolation is the extent to which it shows how humanity can rally round in times of adversity, with heroic British rescue teams joining colleagues from the US and elsewhere to fly out.
And solidarity seems especially strong in Japan itself. Perhaps even more impressive than Japan’s technological power is its social strength, with supermarkets cutting prices and vending machine owners giving out free drinks as people work together to survive. Most noticeably of all, there has been no looting, and I’m not the only one curious about this.
This is quite unusual among human cultures, and it’s unlikely it would be the case in Britain. During the 2007 floods in the West Country abandoned cars were broken into and free packs of bottled water were stolen. There was looting in Chile after the earthquake last year – so much so that troops were sent in; in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina saw looting on a shocking scale.
Why do some cultures react to disaster by reverting to everyone for himself, but others – especially the Japanese – display altruism even in adversity?
#interesting
