Re: Public
Natural disasters reveal a societies structure. They reveal a cultures hidden joints and weak points. These parts are habitually papered over by the surplus of normal give and take an appear non-the-worse for it. But strong winds strip this away:
China: 40,000 dead, 5 million homeless after quake - washingtonpost.com ,
Myanmar Raises Cyclone Toll to 78,000. Particularly emergencies reveal the nature of the governing elites relation to the people. They do that with growing clarity through three phases of a disaster. Immediate reaction: the first responders. These are the actions of the police, fire and health professionals in the affected area. The next phase is the aftermath, when the central government reacts and directs additional resources to the area to provide relief for the exhaustion of initial efforts. The last phase is the restoration of normalacy and efforts to bring the area back into national productivity. Things are cleaned up and rebuilt. Peoples input is heard, and the bureaucracy is examined. What joins all this is these are all points where resources and money are allocated. All societies aim at a certain ideal state. One of harmony; balance and prosperity. Towards this end they claim a government by for and of the people. In practice quite universally a bipartite affair: the governed and the governing. What we really desire is to not be left ungoverned. That these halves remain a whole. It is an unmistakable marker of illegitimacy when a government does not respond well to a crisis.
Political theory traditionally had its ideas of how a society ends up with a governing structure. Social Compacts, moments of singular unity when agreement passes through a group and they become a people. It doesn't make much difference in the end whether this moment is a mystery, mysticism, or memory, as long as the people concede it must have happened. The government gains authority and responsibility. They set a cultural optimality and set it above the level of individual experience. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, is more critical than the unfettered autonomy of the one. From this arises a model of order, and a repression of anything deviating from that order. This order good or bad will result in general happiness or suffering respectively. Which is judged and felt by the individual, whose well-being in the end is tied to the ability to take actions and make decisions to bring their own life and body back into balance. Even the perception of good or bad order is a perception of individuals tied to their own set of experience convenience and adjustment.
A society perhaps can be thought of as a set of lines. A main line possessing a vector, a direction arising out of the discourse of myriad adjacencies. A separate far smaller parallel line representing the ruling regime which attempts to control the discourse and direction of the first. The distance across is the public space and the primary control is to allow only the public voice in that space. The ruler to the ruled, a public voice of referendum (when allowed) to the ruler. No other institutions or processes can be allowed in that space.
Both Burma and China are authoritarian states. China nominally a republic of the people. Burma, in its guise as Myanmar, no more than an experiment in military tyranny. In both (and they are certainly not alone in this) power and privilege flow together readily to form a sustaining elite, a local nobility. China's rulers appeared to be concerned for its citizens. Alongside its own primacy of course, but the military and bureaucracies turned with a single and efficient face and headed out
Teams Struggle to Reach Earthquake Survivors. Data was collected, needs assesed, media coverage organized. More singularly briefly China's people seemed ready and able to care for themselves. Critical public space was allowed open, to fill with spontaneous emergence of citizen assistance, philanthropy and covenanting identity
Chinese Open Wallets to Aid Earthquake Victims. The party warming to its practical side seems inclined to allow this for now. As long, I expect, as no group declares or intimates it cares more or can do more for the people than the party
Can Charity Change China? - WSJ.com. The Burmese junta demonstrated absolute unconcern for the people of Burma
Myanmar Farmers May Miss Harvest, and even appeared aggrieved that the people's misfortune called for some action or appearance of sympathy on their part. The US Navy which after the tsunami a few years ago was able to move supplies in at critical junctures has been disallowed and must sail away
U.S. Navy Waiting for Junta's Permission to Deliver Burma Aid - washingtonpost.com. The generals have from the day they invalidated the election of 1990 and placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest never been less than Parasitic and Unobliging. Even a month after cyclone Nargis their denial their callous murderous disdain is untouched
Myanmar Warned Over Forcing Cyclone Survivors Home - NYTimes.com. But I must not think bad thoughts. It is simply that the Burmese Generals, Than Shwe and the rest, believe manfully in the highest good: order. Order and obedience. The State Peace and Development Council maintains this. The three main objectives of the Union of Solidarity and Development are: 1) Non-disintegration of the Union 2) Non disintegration of national solidarity 3) Perpetuation of sovereignty. Now I am, again un-troubled (see 2:57) and one with the lotus.
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