What's With the Mass Outpouring?

I don't really understand this mass grief phenomenon where we dump a city’s worth of florist shops of flowers on a certain spot, or pack a church carrying a Bunnings worth of candles, or cry hysterically in public singing kumbaya wearing daisy chains standing in spiritual circles for something that essentially has nothing to do with us.

People packed St Paul’s Cathedral for, I guess, the relatives, of MH17? Why? I don't get it? Was it fear? Fear of what? 

Are people bored with their lives and they need the misery of people, they don’t even know, to make their own lives more interesting, more meaningful? Shrug? Why else do people get overcome with the plight of complete strangers? 

I’m sure it has something to do with our slavish addiction to the twenty four hour news cycle. I’m betting it will be a “syndrome” in years to come. I like to call it the world psycho drama.

I just don't understand why? Would you go to the funeral service, the memorial service of somebody you didn't know?


I mean, it is nice. I’d have to say so, if I was asked. It’s better than the opposite, don’t get me wrong. Is it just that there is more of us now? It seems more intense?
Shane said to me (from London) it is fear? Fear of what though? Also dying in a plane crash? Being the victim of war? It seems like an unfounded fear?

Maybe they packed St Paul's for humanity? But with the state of the world, that seems like a very selective criteria. If it were really for humanity, surely they would spend their whole lives in St Paul's. 

Were they giving thanks that something bad happened to somebody else and it didn't happened to them? That hardly seems very generous, or selfless.


Do you think we feel this mass grief for disasters because we are so mean and selfish and self focused in our day to day lives? We treat each other badly in this dog eat dog world. We are mean to people on the roads, we are mean to people at work, we are mean to people on social media - we’re all just one comment away from being a troll, apparently. We think nothing of disadvantaging someone else if it advantages us. 

We are mean to the poor (try harder), the unemployed (get a job), the displaced (don't come here and take our jobs). We are taught by governments to distrust refugees (get in line, or we'll send you back to where you came from) to be fearful of strangers. 

Do you think a big disaster gives us a communal sense of relief, that we can throw off the guilt of our everyday meanness and feel good about ourselves for feeling empathy for other people?


Do big disasters make us feel better about ourselves?