the chicken or the egg...

The recent shebang of the earthquake in the east and the behaviour of the varying reactions to it have certainly gotten me intrigued with its extremities of one end to the other. All in all, the mixed retroactions are definitely an eye opener.

There would definitely be those who feel strongly that those in the west are probably callously uncaring and cold with regards to this episode. Nevertheless, it is hard to fault them for the absence of knowledge despite it being quite an earthshaking, literally, catastrophe, fact being there is a genuine lack of true awareness in the western parts of the world. Not to say it is not reported in the usual media mediums, but rather, it does not quite hit the headliners every single day with running subtitles to report on the exponentially growing death and missing counts like in the Southeast Asian countries.

Having said that, one cannot deny that there is an actual lack of relevance, to an extent, to these parts of the world; what more if one actually considers the geographical distance, let alone the relation on a personal level. The only people who would affected the most, would be the Chinese who have left hometown for the pursuit of better prospects and life, and those who have family or someone close who happen to be in the areas of disaster.

In all honesty, if there were to be any sort of action taken, even if there is a want to render help for whatever reason, be it from the level of personal relation, basal human compassion, or good old political agenda, reckon it would be more likely to fall under the reason of the latter more. Conversely, if situations were to be turned around, it is more likely than not for the above to happen yet again in reverse situations, say Italy has an earthquake, countries in the United Nations would come running to the rescue, and the rest can be assumed to be highly similar when it comes to portrayal and level of importance of the event in the news and on ground level to the eastern counterparts.

On that note, it is relatively glaring on just how much the media plays a major part in affecting all the various reactions, and the influence it could have potentially. For one, there is the acclaimed actress Zhang Ziyi who is in a position to cough out a personal donation of $100 000 and is able to go around garnering donations from the rich and famous all around the world, as well as from the “little people”, and this is just based on her personal efforts. Then on the other hand, there are the collective masses of celebrities through joint efforts at the numerous fund raisers that have been popping up like a teenager’s bad day of acne, not that it is a bad thing for once since it is, after all, for a good cause.

More often than not, many have a tendency to forget the power of the “little people”, mayhap by how the by play of society goes. In retrospect, what is also forgotten is that those in affluent positions, particularly those placed on a pedestal with reference to that in the entertainment industry, can be and are there, aside from personal hard work and effort, because of the common folk. In short, we make them, we break them. An absolutely fascinating pyramidal relationship if you ask me; and in a strange roundabout way, comes to reminding me of the age old chicken or the egg question.

Of the two, which one is deem to be the more important element, the chicken, or the egg? Look at it the usual way, which of the two came first? Perhaps there is no relevance at all, though am progressively egged on to find that missing link of “how” and have all these tied together in a little neat package. Guess that is what makes me the addled dud as have yet to quite really figure that out down to a tee as yet. Looking back at how wordy this has been, that was quite a whole mouthful of two cents... oops...