Mail on Sunday 2005

AFTER THE TSUNAMI: THE SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY

It seems that every major tragedy that hits this world of ours offers the chance for a new start - simply because evidence of human sympathy is itself symbolic of hope. Suffering sweeps all in its path, yet compassion follows swiftly behind, trying desperately to pick up the pieces, as it always does. We are rocked by the enormity of disaster, and anguished by the countless stories of horror and pain, yet at the same time awestuck by the innate human response of pity. I believe it will be one of the lessons of the tsunami disaster - a single candle in the darkness.

Inevitably the voices of cynicism are raised, suggesting that people are sending money because they might have been to Thailand, or because Western tourists are involved. I don’t believe it. The pensioner who can’t pick out Indonesia on a map doesn’t send her £20 because she identifies with tourists in Phuket, although of course every individual story stops your heart. She sends it because she sees the faces of children - pudgy, unformed, innocent - as the same, no matter what the colour of the skin beneath their tears. She sends it because she is overwhelmed by the universality of pain. To doubt that is call the whole meaning of life into question.

If our emotional response to events is shaped by  (for want of a better phrase)the moral climate we live in, then the evidence at the start of this new year is - truly - that it isn’t as bad as we sometimes think. This is not to be self-congratulatory. The fact that generosity is trumpeted can only increase it, good following upon good. As the distinguished moral philosopher Simon Blackburn points out, ‘We need stories of our own value in the eyes of each other, the eyes of the world.’  So the British public is entitled to feel, not pleased, but quietly satisfied that it still has the capacity to reach out. To respond spontaneously to feelings of outrage, horror  and pity  by sending money to an appeal not only serves to diminish the feeling of helplessness, it reminds you of who you are.

The evidence is also that our standards of behaviour are not set by our leaders. How else can we explain the sequence of events? The British government  inititially pledged £500,000, when it was obvious from the beginning that this was a major catastrophe. They upped the offer to £1 million before finally, sensing the public mood and wary of damning criticism, upping the ante to £15 million.

Across the pond President Bush made a cringe-making speech trumpeting America’s leadership in the charity stakes, when everybody knows the US is giving less than it spends in a single hour in Iraq.  What’s more the fact that the world sees the obscenity quite clearly, whilst his advisors did not (or else why would that self-serving and dishonest speech have gone ahead?) proves that true wisdom lies within the people, not the politicians. They hedge and fudge and wait and calculate, until  public feeling shames them into action.

But what is the wellspring of that public feeling? Recent history contradicts  that knee jerk cynicism which says it is because Europeans holiday in the region, and therefore it feels closer to home. In 1973 my ex-husband Jonathan Dimbleby made an extraordinary, powerful ITV report called ‘The Unknown Famine’ about Ethiopia, where 200 million people died of starvation. His appeal on ITV and BBC raised about £80 million in today’s terms, then the biggest amount ever raised by television. My point is that then, 11 years before Band Aid, people had little knowledge of these issues, and no connection at all with Ethiopia.  No pop stars were involved, no Europeans affected, yet they gave and gave, and I will always remember how overwhelmingly moved Jonathan was by the letters, their generosity. I don’t know how today’s cynics would explain it.

Where does such pure altruism come from?  It is a given that a mother will rush towards the waves in an attempt to save her children, but what makes a woman die trying to save somebody else’s child? Why would local hotel staff go on obeying their gentle cultural imperative to put the guests first? What makes a man dive into the flood repeatedly to rescue others? Why would a man turn himself into a human bridge on a doomed ferry, so that strangers can scramble to safety?

I could go on and on.  This is a mystery that contradicts science - the Darwinian instinct for survival at all costs. Even the schoolboy who jumps into a freezing canal to save a puppy is obeying something far more fundamental. Despite all the proofs to the contrary human beings do not always obey the ‘me first’ instinct. The history of humanity may groan with the dead weight of of cruelty, greed, corruption and hate, and yet the scales tremble in the balance as with goodness, devotion, selflessness and outright heroism float on the other side.

Leaving aside the actual actions of those whose lives may be threatened, we can only start to understand compassion shown at a distance by considering how a disaster impinges on our very souls. The very suddenness of the tsunami is a reminder of the vast, implacable power of the planet, before which cumulative knowledge and actions are as nothing at all. Is has to make us realise the simple truth: ‘ Today  - you, tomorrow - me. We are in this together.’

Daily life, for most people, is full of small disappointments, a sense of inadequacy and frustration, the yearning for what will never be, and over it all, the knowledge that each day is another step on the inevitable path from the cradle to the grave. What to do? Go shopping, watch TV, love your family, go shopping, watch TV, cheer the team, order a takeaway.......

Then the mundanity of the daily round is shattered by a twitch in the earth’s surface which  releases hell from the depths. I honestly believe our instincts compel us to restore the balance in what ever way we can.  So then the shedding of  tears for others then giving generously to help them - the pity and the kindness - are essential bricks without which no heaven can be created.

Let there be no doubt: the most fundamental kind of love is brotherly love. It underlies all the rest. It is what the Bible means in the injunction to love your neighbour as yourself. It is based on the knowledge that we are all one, and that differences in ability and nationality are as nothing compared with that common core of humanity. When you look at the surface of another human being you will see the differences which separate us. But look at the core - make that imaginative leap - and you are forced to see the deeper elements of identity. Perhaps it is hard to imagine what it is like to have to walk twenty miles for water, but it is all to easy to identify with the anguish on the face of a parent wailing for a dead child, or the child wandering alone.

It is that precious empathy - the feeling as one with another, rather than the sympathy for  them - which is the key to our survival. This is more powerful than any government, and stronger  (here speaks the voice of the eternal optimist)  than evil. It is the bedraggled hope which clings to a branch in the storm, singing a small song almost drowned by the gale. And  - here is the awe-inspiring truth - it lives within us,  fallible as we are. William Blake, who gave us the great hymn ‘Jerusalem’ wrote a simple little poem, `The Divine Image’, which honours that potential for goodness that comes into the world with every new baby, no matter what his or her nationality:

For Mercy has a human heart.

Pity a human face,

And Love the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.