3 January

Possible hard(est) lessons from the fire, #3. Disaster relief, appeals. The flood of emotional giving in disasters isn’t ‘the community coming together’. It’s not really about helping others. Most disaster relief is also a disaster, in practical terms; its main function is to give individuals a way to express their own identity in relation to a difficult situation. You can show this by listing all of the many social disasters that attract no attention at all - it’s a highly selective phenomenon. Like hay runners, bushfire relief points to how individual givers want to create an identity for themselves, rather than to any great community spirit.