Lots of headlines now on day seven about the “unfolding” situation in Japan.  Even casual (read: armchair) observation leaves me with the impression that this thing has pretty well unfolded already.  Just look at how this three-pronged crisis — humanitarian, nuclear, economic – has overrun its initial headlines.  It is only a handful of days ago that the main story was the lack of destruction and devastation; a disaster averted by Japanese know-how and organization.  Sharp contrasts were drawn or implied in comparison to the helpless likes of Haiti and Bangladesh.  Praise was heaped on everything from architectural codes and standards to the emergency response capacity.  

To be very clear, such praise was and is well-deserved.  The response capacity of the Japanese authorities, combined with their preparedness for earthquakes, undoubtedly averted an incalculably worse catastrophe.  And yet the Japanese people find themselves just as undoubtedly right smack in the middle of … a catastrophe.  Was that early optimism a case of simple error?  Of not getting the story right?  A case of the situation becoming worse as the days progress (e.g., the nuclear issue)?  

Or is there something else at play here?  Were we too quick to look at Japan and see – Thank Goodness! – our developed world’s mastery of Mother Nature?  Have we become mesmerized by that shield of technology?  Is it really a comfort blankie, protecting our psyche from the likes of Moby Dick pounding the vessel of our orderly world?  Chaos expunged from our lives.  And even where we saw the developed world’s failure in New Orleans a few years ago, we also knew that New Orleans was practically Third World anyway, closer to its Creole cousin Port-au-Prince than to Tokyo, Berlin or the truly civilized worlds in which we live.

Did those rose-tinted glasses project onto Japan our own illusion of security, of being protected by our sophistication, our gadgetry and our smug modernity?  Because if this sort of destruction and suffering can happen to the people of Japan, it can happen to all of us. Last Friday, we saw what we wanted to see.