My daughter, usually a very generous person, questioned the need to send aid to Japan the other day.  Her basis was all of the trouble in our own country should be taken care of first.  She had a point, but I made a bigger one, and she acquiesce fairly easily that Japan needed and deserved our help.

 

The world is changing.  Countries’ borders are fuzzing, after a fashion.  My roommate, Sam, and I both interact with friends from Australia.  We consider our respective friends there to be close friends, even though we have never met and likely never will meet them in person.  We have gotten to know them as if they were neighbors living down the street.  I have, over the last decade or two, had other acquaintances from around the world.  Some have been on a purely professional basis, but I have interacted socially with a few on the internet.

 

These relationships, I believe, are the first steps towards globalization.  The world has always been a community on a grand scale, but in the last few decades that community has become more closely knit.  Democratic ideals are slowly spreading, in no small part (I believe) thanks to relationships like the ones Sam and I have established with international friends.  Look at the recent shake up in Egypt.  The people of the country, having interacted with Americans and others with democratic leanings over the internet, rose up in rebellion over the government’s attempt to move away from democracy.

 

So yes, we have issues here in America.  People are starving, they are lacking education, they need medical care they aren’t likely to receive.  There are many problems here which could use a bigger infusion of financial support.  However, I favor a policy of foreign domesticity, where the problems of distant lands are seen as our own problems.

 

Japan, prior to the quake, had the same problems we do, after all.  They had poverty-stricken areas, they had their own groups of people looking for food, education and medical care.  The numbers were much smaller than those of the U.S., but they were there.  Now, on top of that, they have the troubles this terrible earthquake has brought.  Yes, we have these issues in America, but we don’t have cities with ninety-percent of the town in ruins and half the population missing and likely dead.  The ninety-percent part is probably a generous estimate, judging from some of the photos of some of the nation’s communities.  The other estimate is pretty close to accurate; I have heard of at least two different cities of a population of around twenty-thousand where around ten-thousand were missing and likely killed in the quake or its tsunamic aftermath.  Reports of hundred of bodies being found have been coming through the press.  The death toll is over thirty-three hundred and still rising.  The prime minister has likened the disaster to the atomic bombings of World War II.

 

So yes, we have economic issues here, but Japan’s problems right now are far worse.  They need and, in my opinion, deserve our aid.  Let us not hesitate to show them we’re their close friends who happen to live far away.  Perhaps if we demonstrate an attitude foreign domesticity enough, the world will become more unified.  I have hope.