it is strange how those far far more horrific floods in Pakistan took up so little coverage, but that's the power of the mass media.

it is up to us individually to focus on what's important, what's urgent, and what's trivial and to do what we can where we can and leave the rest to the mercy of God.

Why NOT build dams? Is it because the Greens fear we might upset some lowly life form? After all, the Greens who chant the mindless "no Dams" mantra believe humans are a blight on the planet anyway.

Apparently, the Greens believe that saving one habitat of the lungfish is more important than preventing human death and misery.

Dams aren't meant to cope with ALL possible floods, but they do mitigate the extent of the disasters and they hold the water for times of drought-

Remember the drought?

NO dams will be built and we will go through this all again, simply because the Labor Party has formed an unholy alliance with the Greens.

Shrode advises that we should “do what we can where we can and leave the rest to the mercy of God.” Wasn’t it God who sent the floods in the first place? Or was he just as much taken by surprise as the rest of us?

I was shocked by the blunt approach to what is a tragedy for many - but I do agree with so much of what was said.

Nevertheless I hesitated to post a comment because I don’t want to be associated with this callousness, and also because the author could not resist pushing another barrow.

On one hand he condemns our relative carelessness about greater suffering elsewhere in the world while on the other he says Australia is overpopulated & presumably should lock up the borders.

I reject such callousness dressed up as integrity - too much for me to ignore.

In agreeing with the author's main point, I also risk being associated with anti ecology attitudes in the comment by Atman and the inference by SHRODE that God should be relied on to save us from our ignorance and callousness. I reject those ideas too, but in commenting at all I am obviously going to find myself among wolves.

That's okay, Landrights, not many issues are simply either/or, there are usually too many complexities involved, and the best approach is to put forward as many alternatives as possible and argue them out, without name-calling and easy dichotomising.

Joe

What a load of sanctimonious BS. This is the tired and ridiculous "people care more about their dogs than they do about other people" diatribe. Funny how it's always the most embittered and cynical who
spout it. The world is full of people who care. BH just isn't one of them.

I am sure that there is some sort of middle ground between the "couldn't care less" attitude of Brian Holden and the "look at me, heroically saving the flood victims" attitude of much of the media.

"Disasters" happen! Survivors pick up the pieces and move on - as a societal if not individual behaviour. Worldwide!

Those of us who were neither personally, nor friends or relatives affected generally feel sympathy and/or empathy for our fellow citizens - especially those who lost loved ones. This is demonstrated by the response of many unaffected Australians who have volunteered, donated, opened their homes and other expressions of concern and solidarity. It's called "Looking after your own!" Who knows when we may become 'victims' ourselves?

As for what happens in the rest of the world - I am relatively unconcerned. Yes I feel sympathy and agree with the provision of AID provided it is in real terms like food, expertise, equipment etc, not money as I believe this often finds its way into the coffers of corrupt governments.

Othewise the care factor is not huge - unless 'victims' decide they'd like to make for Australia in leaky boats. Then I become truly discompassionate.

For the bleeding hearts who will undoubtedly respond with comments using words like "racist" and "xenophobic" please consider that this very moment there are probably a number of foreign fruitcakes praising God for visiting this event upon a Nation of infidels and possibly a few already living within our borders.

I'm with the last few posters. I've heard this kind of rubbish more times than I care to remember. It's a tired argument, and a little shallow too. Would you like there to be non-stop coverage of every disaster around the world? Or a few days coverage of every disaster, even in our own backyard, followed by a collective amnesia. I'm sure the vast majority of the citizens of Jordan do not care or do not know about the floods in Queensland. Does this make them heartless? Or more enlightened? Would you like every news bulletin to preface every story about a disaster in a 1st world country with the line, "of course it's nothing compared to the suffering of the 3rd world..." Do you think that in showing compassion to our fellow Australians, we are automatically dismissive of the suffering of others around the world?

Barry Holden, I've met your type before. And I think this exactly the spot for cheap name calling. I bet you are the sort of self-righteous kill-joy who likes to verbally batter all around you about how much more aware and empathetic you are about everything else. I bet you never have any fun, instead opting to watch documentaries about public sanitation in Chad, when you're not writing letters to the editor about the way in which game shows reinforce the dominant racist-sexist paradigm.

I hope you can practice what you preach, and tell everybody you know that you don't care about the floods in Queensland. Eventually you're gonna tell it to someone who's does care.... It is a little too easy to be a contrarian. You really are stupid.

It is refreshing to read this article , which accords with my reactions to the media reaction to this , and similar , natural disasters . While I do care , and will contribute to an appeal , I regard the extent of media coverage as excessive . I have family in Queensland , who ,mercifully , have survived with no physical , and minimal financial loss . Very few people genuinely feel sorrow about loss suffered by persons other than close family and friends , but we are all supposed to express personal grief at the collective suffering of persons whom we do not know , when a major disaster occurs , or when a " celebrity " suffers a misfortune .If one person , whom we do not know , suffers a loss through natural causes , or accident , the media does not report it and we are not expected to grieve . When there are many persons suffering , the media uses terms like "decimated " , "tsunami " and " holocaust " all of which are incorrect uses in the present circumstances .

Subjectively, we have a hierarchy of concern based on proximity and connectedness. So, we are most moved by the suffering of ourselves and our families, then our friends, then neighbours, then others in our communities, and then perhaps those of the same nationality as us.

The basis of many ethical systems, however, is to recognise firstly that this subjective hierarchy is not an objective one, and secondly than an ethical system gives equal weight to the suffering of all, even if as subjective individuals we don’t. Christianity, utilitarianism and many other ethical systems are at heart based on the empathetic awareness that someone else’s suffering matters as much to them as the same experiences would to us. From the “point of view of the universe” (as Singer describes it), another person’s suffering is no more or less undesirable than my suffering.

Racism does not consist of caring more about the suffering of a fellow Australian than a Pakistani; it consists of believing a Pakistani’s suffering to be less important in any objective or absolute sense than the suffering of an Australian. The most ethical and compassionate people I know are ones who are most aware of the gap between subjective and objective responses to others, and who try to reduce it by recognising and responding to the absolute value of every human being.

So I don’t believe we are hypocritical, callous or racist if we care more for Queenslanders than Pakistanis. But we are callous is we fail to be moved because we are not directly affected, and worse still if we say that foreign aid to Pakistan and other poor countries should be stopped and diverted to Australian flood relief, as some letter writers have argued on our local press.

There is also a world of difference between the shallow, mawkish self-indulgent outpourings on Diana’s death and an empathetic response to widespread human suffering in natural disasters

While I am interested in what is happening, my experience with the media has been similar. Endless, endless repetition. I could watch the news for half an hour and be little more informed than I was the previous day.

Was there no other news? Did the rest of Australia or the world cease spinning?

The final effect on my viewing was that I stopped watching the news, and went onto international websites to find out what was really happening.

As for the directors of the guilty news channels, I feel the firing squad is too quick a death.

"But it only sounds awful because it is not what anybody is supposed to say. I would venture to say that only a small minority of Australians who do not have family or close friends affected by the floods feels any emotion stronger than if they could not find an empty seat on the train home last night." Brian.

To the contrary Brian, my heart has ached for all the children from day one. Prayers said for their siblings and parents each night as I heard about each of the precious hearts not given the opportunity to live as long as we have.

Brian, you may be quite surprised at the heavy hearts present in many young people 14-early 20's age categories, or any age, that comprehend and deeply sympathise with the losses that families are experiencing now.

Similarly, the horror felt, when a young child such as Zhara Baker was taken from this life too early. People, particularly parents and siblings, genuinely feel for other people losing their children, having lost family members and children in their own families themselves.

Surely you have mixed with enough people throughout your life to realise this?

I think this article shows OLO has a valuable position in our online media, primarily because it allows a non mainstream view to be expressed. After merely two days of over hyped-intense TV saturation of the QLD floods, I'd had enough and just kept the TV off.

It was not only our American TV stations of channels 7, 9 and 10 but serial offender was the ABC. Officially sanctioned with the job of natural disaster govt. resource, it has become something of a disaster junkie.

In the process, no other news in the world was happening whatsoever.

The comparison between Qld and Pakistan floods was interesting, if invalid. The Pakistani govt lambasted the world for not being generous enough, yet who would trust a govt which can afford to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, yet can't find helicopters to deliver aid to flood (and previously, earthquake) victims? Where was the mass mobilisation of volunteers, ready to help strangers, in Pakistan? There's the rub. Australia is a great nation with a healthy psyche, Pakistan is an Islamic basket-case, more interested in killing "blasphemers" than having a functioning disaster relief setup (indeed, many might say, it would be great a start if Pakistan had a functioning government).

You have a point there Brian, hair shirts and floggings have been ordered for all Queenslanders, to be carried out immediately.

Er, but we can't find some of them, is that a problem?

Oops, sorry, didn't mean to interrupt your tea and biscuit in front of the tele.

Brian does have a point. Although some readers clearly consider his words to be too brutal for their tastes, he is, in fact, merely highlighting the extent to which current political and social discourse, (and the media representations that fuel it), lack any criteria for rational evaluation. Our appetite for gazing into the private grief of others is validated by a culture of emotionalism that tells us we are sharing in their pain and thereby participating in their therapeutic relief. We feel good about ourselves when we publicly display how deeply we feel the distress of others - particularly those who, in some way, we identify with. In the wake of a 'disaster', politicians quickly exploit the saturated media coverage to prove the depth of their humanity to the electorate. News media turn all these elements into an entertainment format.

We haven't focused a great deal on the over 600 people killed in floods and landslides in the poverty stricken areas of Rio de Janeiro state because the Queensland floods are 'our' disaster. Similarly, most of us have no idea what is going on in Tunisia or the Ivory Coast and we can't spare enough additional emotional commitment to care. Brian is right to point out that we are a rich country and that Queensland will recover quickly from this event. All he is really saying is that we might benefit from a little rational reflection and let's keep such events in their proper perspective.

V, "..most of us have no idea what is going on in Tunisia or the Ivory Coast and we can't spare enough additional emotional commitment to care."

You speak for yourself and some sections of the self-loathing Left, not for Australians when you make wrong judgemental statements like that about them. It is a stupid mistake to judge Australians by your own behaviour or by what some journalists might do on a particular occasion, even if they are doing their best and failing in your eyes.

You are wrong to assume the emotion of politicians like Anna Bligh is an artifice or wrongly directed. Obviously they care about their fellow human beings and have been affected by what they have seen and are concious that decisions they are having to make for instance affecting the location of resources, are life and death.

You are wrong to judge Australians as uncaring and the aid to other countries and their welcome to very high per capita immigration over decades are testaments to that.

You begrudge Australians the benefits of the civil, caring, democratic society they strived to create and continue to fight to protect. Instead, you should be directing your judgement and gall at the leaders of poverty-stricken countries for their corruption and political and religious systems that do not provide for their people.

Above all, the care Australians are expressing for the welfare of their fellow countrymen is natural and good. It is ridiculous to say that they should somehow reduce their concern for Queenslanders who have lost their assets and loved ones because there are disasters elsewhere in the world, apportioning their sympathy according to the Left's ideals of what is 'equitable' and what is not.

BTW, Bob Brown, leader of the Greens, is the only political leader who has tried to make political mileage out of the floods. Bob Brown and the Greens will be be remembered for that.

Well I too was annoyed by the media's coverage...but that is what they do. At least there were no bare-faced lies reported as facts as per war coverage.
As for caring...how could one not? Did the author *seriously* not feel some pain for the victims even though he didn't know them?
Just because the media babbles and the politicians preen it doesn't mean the event itself is somehow tainted.
Rhian is spot on about hierarchy of concern.
Viking is also spot on: We'd like to care, but we cannot go around pumping money into corrupt nations. Democracy involves community cohesion and some bottom-up activism...if we see a deserving people then we will help. Sad choice to have to make (for those of us that can feel empathy for strangers...even foreign strangers with racial differences)...but the only rational one we can make. It's kind of like sympathy for historical disasters...sad but not *too* sad.

Hmmm, severe storm warning for Brisbane and SEQld this afternoon.

Must be some of that tiresome, 'repetitive' news the article was talking about.

Totally insensitive of BOM and the news media to report it. Shouldn't even be mentioned unless it is happening in some overseas country, whereupon we should all flail ourselves in apology for our democratic system of government.

Brian,
I endorse your comments wholeheartedly.
The whole thing has been turned into a massive publicity stunt.
Maybe we can skip the Australia Day Bullsh!t this year? We've already had it!

Brian, this is unquestionably the saddest thing I've read or heard thus far in the flood response... as someone whose house was flood damaged, I have been overcome with the generosity of total strangers, whether it be helping in the clean-up or simply conveying empathy. There's no expectation that everyone in Brisbane or Qld felt similarly but to be so cold and calculating in your response is frightening to read.
If you were really honest with yourself, as you seem to pride yourself on, I'd suggest checking in to a mental health specialist to address an obvious inability to emotionally connect at all with a local natural disaster and its widespread consequences - perhaps there's some undiagnosed Aspergers Syndrome tendencies that reportedly afflict a large percentage of older Australian men.