Japan is old news by now. Japan as an environmental catastrophe; Japan as potentially expanding the notion of 'threat to peace and security' in international law; Japan as a human tragedy; Japan as laying the ground for scientific bureaucracy to rise up again. You may choose the standpoint that fits you best.
There is something else about Japan however that did not take place in Japan. It has to do with our reaction to the events in Japan. How did we react, really?
Newspapers, radios, television, internet, facebook, twitter. All these thousands of videos and statuses on facebook. Fear for what we cannot control. Grief. Sadness. Sympathy. We sympathised to the Japanese mising people, the victims, the ones left behind. Sympathy is the feeling of being sorry for someone or something. Empathy takes much more. Empathy implies a more active involvement in someone else's emotional state. Sympathy then; fair enough.
On one condition though. On the condition that we consider the possibility that we did not feel any sympathy, although we were truly convinced that we felf sympathy.
Sympathy is an emotional reaction, qua feeling. But sympathy is also a social skill developed through time. We are designed, socially and biologically speaking, to carry along and practice this skill. We, as human beings. Other animals may carry it to a certain extent.
How many thousands ambulances' sirens driving from another corner of the planet are we able to perceive? Sympathy may be an intergenerational and universal (just maybe) skill but there exist inherent limits to it.
As with any other skill, we may lose it in time and space if we do not practice it or we do not need to practice it anymore. We used to run faster long time ago for catching our food. We do not do it anymore. We do not have to catch our food. We changed the environment and our skills gradually adapted to it.
Evolutionary landscape includes our skill of sympathy. There is a great difference between having and practicing this skill and being stuck temporarily with the habit or the illusion that you still have the skill. Space has altered. We altered it. Fundamentally. Our perception of time has radically changed. Everything happens quickly. Too quickly. Stimulants were never before so many. We were never before recipients of all this information about things happening around the globe. We did not have the means. Now that we acquire the means, are we designed - at this phase, at least - to handle all this information? Is it possible that we use the very same skills to accomodate within our perception and horizon differing paradigms? If landscape changes, it becomes inescapable that we change, we adapt. Biology and evolution are also subject to culture. Farming is an ideal example. Sitting in front of a monitor may be another example. Interconnected to everyone and everything; instantly. Detached; continuously.
My Japan showed me that we are stuck in the middle of an invisible process. Trapped between the social skill that we used to have and our fake conviction that we still have it (to the same extent). Who will pass on to future generations the skill of sympathy? Will it be sympathy as we denote it today? Will it be something different? Will we still call it sympathy or maybe we shall rename it? How long does it take for a skill to completely fade away? Are we still feeling sorry and what precisely do we mean by that?
In one of Murakami's stories ('Super-Frog saves Tokyo') there is Mr. Frog. He has to save Tokyo from a catastrophic earthquake. He has to fight with the Warm which is angry and causes the earthquakes. To make the story short, Mr. Frog at the end succeeds in saving Tokyo. Unfortunately, reality did not prove correct this story. As it is the case with most of the stories that we often make up for ourselves.
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