Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Fear?
I keep thinking about the discussion we had today following our viewing of the Frontline and Spike Lee films on Hurricane Katrina. It's frightening to break down an event such as this to its components such as structure, leadership, race, class, and underlying assumptions. I think it is relatively easy for us to look in hindsight and see the flaws and the unconscious (or conscious) immoral decisions (or lack of decision) that took place. I wonder where in the equation enters the very human reaction of fear -- as I try to imagine myself in a place of so-called power in a situation such as this, I wonder if I would have been paralyzed by fear into a state of indecision or irrelationally reacting by attempting to assert control upon the situation -- It is clear that the events following Katrina were inhumanane, however were they fed from the very human state of fear at the unbelievability and very chaos of the situation?
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4 comments:
I was feeling the same way, wondering what I would have done and thinking about what it means to be a "leader". I thought a lot about the administrators in our cohort who are responsible for the safety of the students and teachers in their buildings, and how they react when they are confronted with daily concerns of safety. I agree that it is much easier to judge all leaders in hindsight, as if they had had the same vantage point as we do now that the events have unfolded. Perhaps the key is in learning from our experiences and learning to cope with our fear so that we are not paralyzed when we need to act?
Or if it wasn't fear, maybe it was just assuming that somebody else was taking care of the problem. I think we can't be afraid to be the first one to act. Doing something, even if you risk replicating somebody else's actions, is better than doing nothing.
what's the difference between the immediate response to katrina and the immediate response to the guy run over by a car in hartford last month?
paralysis schmaralysis...
do something.
You're a doer, for the people and of the people, or you're not. PR has hurricanes often (clearly nothing like what happened in LA, but stay with me for a sec). In my teens I used to go to the beach right before the storm and they're pretty violent(I'm smarter now). One in the late 90s tore every living piece of grass and tree off the land, and people still cry talking about losing everything. The difference? In my little town, my uncle walked out of his safe little home to save a neighbor when her home ripped through (hard to do with cement homes). I have little doubt anyone in my home town would ever hesitate to save someone in this type of situation. It's our choice to be doers, or not...
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