The aftermath to a national tragedy is sometimes described as a manifestation of long-simmering feelings among a citizenry. I think this is perhaps a nice approach to understanding events for those who are used to reading or writing history books. But in terms of the way a national event changes day-to-day living for people in a particular country, I often feel these interpretations are overstated. It’s a little like when I overhear a private conversation – though I’m only just becoming aware of it, the discussion has a history from well before I’d dropped in. If I interrupted the conversation to share my thoughts, the participants would surely be astonished by how little I knew about the discussion topic.
I think one example of this is what happened after Japan’s a massive tsunami hit in 2011. A big problem in the tsunami’s aftermath was the danger it posed to the country’s nuclear reactors. For many foreign observers, this was a catalyst for vigorous discussion about Japan’s approach toward nuclear energy. But I think using the tsunami as a starting point for a discussion reveals a naivety about how Japanese people have thought and felt about nuclear power for several decades. The reality of nuclear energy in Japan is very simple. On one hand, Japan is an island nation with limited natural resources. For Japan, energy is an ever-present question with increasingly uncertain answers. On the other hand, Japan will forever remain the first country in world history to have been attacked by nuclear weapons. Whenever someone whose lineage is even remotely connected with Hiroshima or Nagasaki gets cancer, people wonder about the lingering genetic effects of the atomic bombs.
Japan’s discussion about nuclear power didn’t start because of the tsunami – it’s more like pundits and politicians abroad started eavesdropping on decades-long Japanese conversations and reported from their own perspective rather than that of their subject. It’s not a huge problem and it’s inevitable to some degree in journalism. But I think it obviously introduces the risk of missing the point by overemphasizing big events at the expense of understanding the underlying emotions and feelings that drive people’s thoughts and actions on a day-to-day level.
In short, I generally disagree with the idea that big events ‘reveal’ or ‘uncover’ feelings among groups, societies, or nations. I think those who believe in this notion are making excuses for not having seen from the air what was always in plain sight to so many on the ground. I think these people have read one too many history books and subscribe to a misplaced notion that only Big Events have enough power to change the world. Such a belief system seems to allow people to justify ignoring all the ways they can make the world better on a day-to-day basis and I wonder if it explains why certain chronic yet obvious problems have festered in our society for so long.
For example, when Puerto Rico was hit by a hurricane in 2017, pundits trampled each other to be the first to comment on the underlying systemic racism revealed by the distribution – or not – of aid and relief. This was an important point, and vital in the many ways it helped bring additional relief to the island. But the only news here was the relief effort – the underlying racism was not a new point. To suggest systemic racism was revealed by the disaster response silences and erases those who’ve been pointing out the same for decades, and their allegations should require no additional support from a hurricane given the damning education, wage, or incarceration metrics we’ve all grown accustomed to tuning out.
A similar dynamic occurred in the aftermath of the 2008 recession. The obvious, public response of the Occupy Wall Street movement inspired uninspired pundits to note the sentiment, the frustration, the outrage, as protesters took to parks and sidewalks to air their views about the financial system. But what was the breaking news? That people were upset about money earned for no apparent reason? That people found something villainous about becoming wealthy in the midst of a major recession? These are among the oldest complaints in the book – or at least, any book except a history book, which is too concerned with describing the world in ways that render ordinary concerns irrelevant in the face of big events.
