Tonight I saw a film called The Bridge of San Luis Rey, based on Thornton Wilder's novel. It stars Robert de Niro, Harvey Keitel, Kathy Bates and several other big names, but it doesn't so far have a U.S. distributor, and one reason for that might be that it tries to grapple with some complex truths. It doesn't do what it should with such fine source material, and it has the air of a magnificent folly about it, but neither is it terrible, and and at least it tries to say something, and chimes oddly with the times. It's about how we respond to disaster; it tries to find what it means when five innocent, loveless people plunge to their deaths from a broken bridge.

Yesterday I heard the rational Richard Dawkins and the spiritual Bishop of Lincoln slugging it out on the radio about whether the tsunami means there's no God. Very interesting it was, too. (The answer is that there is - but on the other hand, there isn't.) Surely, however, this is not the time or place for such debate - God or no God. What's the bishop doing on the radio at such a time? Surely it can't hurt to have your faith shaken occasionally.

Here's Hermann Tertsch, writing on our unreasonable responses to tragedy in a piece titled “Cesspits” from El País (translated by El País English Edition):

“It is not very daring to predict that the year now beginning is going to be marked by the terrible death-rattle of the year that has just ended. An implausible, unbelievable catastrophe has just shown our vulnerability as a species. It has been made quite clear to us that the ship in which we cross the sea of our existence, amid tears or laughter, may sometimes seem to be a patched-up fishing boat from Sri Lanka, or sometimes the first-class staterooms of the Titanic, but a shipwreck is always a possible ending to the cruise. We in the developed world live with our backs turned to the fact of death, so that when it bursts massively into our lives it produces not only horror but an abysmal imbalance, which has to be compensated with garrulous explanations, so as not to cause too much alteration to our ongoing lives. When faced with immense or entirely inconceivable tragedies such as this one, a legion of simple spirits bustles about busily trafficking in causes and culprits. Apart from the usual religious and millenarian messages, we have heard some “explanations” that cast the blame (why not) on the United States — for making secret experiments in the atmosphere and under the earth’s surface, for failing to inform the regions in the path of the wave, and for sabotaging the UN aid effort. The Yankees, the bourgeoisie and the military appear once again in league to sow death and misery among the disinherited. Bullshit in the cesspit. This chatter, however, is fairly innocent compared to the remarks of some tourists, which reveal the degree of degradation that has set in amid the rich societies of the world, who live with their backs turned on death and on human limitation. “I’ve lost everything: passport, money, all my clothes,” said one German, surrounded by corpses, both indigenous and Teutonic. “I don’t understand the tour operator’s total lack of foresight,” whined a Swede. “Nobody is looking after us,” protested a father, in spite of his huge luck in recovering his wife and children. “I’m going to complain to the Ministry. They can’t treat us like this,” barked other tourists. Shame in the cesspit. It is true that, against these deplorable examples, there is the immense tidal wave of solidarity that is beating all records, the mobilization of states large and small, alongside millions of individual contributions and gestures. The solidarity is sincere, though short-term. It is now the living who demand consolation and help. To palliate the pain and to generate hope are the main objectives. We have to make it possible for life to go on there, if the tsunami is not to be followed by a cultural and political tidal wave that could turn southeast Asia into a cesspit. Amid the effects of a catastrophe of biblical proportions, it seems almost obscene to speak of our immediate worries here in Spain...”

Unfortunately, Tertsch almost obscenely goes on to do so, but surely he's spoken well so far. Peter Singer would say that not helping - not only now, but always - is the ethical equivalent of walking straight past a drowning child in a pond. More of that kind of thinking, please, and less complaints to the Ministry. (The Bridge of San Luis Rey, incidentally, cost $24m, and it's a strange world.)
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