by Dave Nocera

Created on: July 26, 2010   Last Updated: July 27, 2010

Imagine if you knew how to solve the BP Gulf disaster, would you drop everything and act on that knowledge?  That’s what the John Tesh Radio show did when they launched the “Adopt a Fisherman” effort to help families that have lost livelihood from the BP Gulf disaster [1].   The National Wildlife Federation launched the “Wildlife Oil Spill Restoration Fund”, to support wildlife rescue and rehabilitation [2].  Even the IRS, not traditionally known for compassion, offers Tax Help to Oil Spill Victims [3].

As a professional problem solver I witness different people confronting crisis on a daily basis. Sadly most of us will either panic in a crisis or downplay the severity to rationalize our excuses not to act.  However if the crisis becomes personal and you thought the disaster was going to hurt you or your loved ones, you would act. Your decision to act is heavily influenced by your personal perception of the risk and we are all prone to downplay risk.

Throughout our lives we are bombarded by the media with one sensational catastrophe after another. From anti-Christ to asteroids, ancient and modern prophecies predict wars, pandemics, earthquakes, climate change, killer volcanoes and even the end of time itself [4]; a belief in doomsday is part of our culture. As a society preoccupied with calamity, a lifetime of over-exposure to the different scenarios of past and future destruction, real or imagined, has desensitized us to risk.  This explains why in 2005 so many in New Orleans ignored the media’s warnings about Hurricane Katrina; incessantly “crying wolf” may bring media ratings but hurts the media’s credibility [5].

But once people become convinced of a real crisis, people do act.  In fact we have a special word in our language for them, we call them heroes.  And we have lots of heroes in America. Americans are one of the most generous nations in donating relief monies; we were the heroes of the Indonesian Tsunami and Haitian Earthquake victims.   We are so motivated to act when a crisis threatens us that even if we cannot act, we must. This need sometimes result in symbolic gestures, which we witnessed after 9-11, such that we attached American flags on our cars to show patriotism, yellow ribbons on our trees to show support for our troops and we even boycotted French fries as a gesture against France for their anti-America posturing [6].  

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