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OPINION:ONE CAN only marvel at the outpouring of sympathy for Haiti. The country’s tragic history is one reason we find the catastrophe so compelling. The sheer scale of the destruction reminds us of the capriciousness of nature, the fragility of all civilisation. Two hundred thousand lives lost, , a capital city destroyed in seconds, many thousands of survivors in agony, their limbs snapped like twigs. From the vantage of our own good fortune, we contemplate, in the words of TS Eliot, some “infinitely suffering thing”, writes LARA MARLOWE
The Haitian earthquake poses the big questions of the human condition. Life and death. Hope and despair. The good of doctors and rescue workers, versus the evil of thugs who raid orphanages in Port-au-Prince. Why? is the most obvious question; neither God’s will nor science seem adequate responses. Albert Camus’s belief in the absurd comes closest to it, but also fails to satisfy our need for answers.
