Human dignity in the face of tragedy

I am both fascinated and awed by the honesty and dignity of the French government in handling the apparent crash of the Air France jet. President Sarkozy said from the outset that survivors were very unlikely, all the while highlighting the enormity of the tragedy and expressing his deepest sympathies. He pledged France’s best efforts in locating the wreckage and helping families cope, and also humbly thanked all the other nations that had jumped in with their support.

There was no evocation of a higher power and no call to wish for anything beyond earnest human abilities; France and all the other nations involved are working to the best of their humble, human powers, and no one has an “in” or an incantation that would work with the forces that govern life and death.

In America, we are used to not ever giving up hope for survivors, “so help us God”… it is a very comforting notion that someone with greater powers than our own could be asked to protect our friends and family members, but if you imagine yourself as a family member of one of the victims, would you really want to latch onto that unlikely hope and go through a second round of tragedy when that insignificant fraction of a likelihood of survivors never materializes?

I think there is also a tendency to believe that people are somehow less urgent in their search if they understand just how tiny a possibility it is for there to be survivors. People forget just how much humans care about what happens to the flesh and blood of other humans… we do not simply stop caring when we think an intangible soul is lost; we care immensely for the physical, visceral truth, for we can see that, and we cannot see any such place as heaven.

So I applaud the hard work and efforts of the men and women involved in the search, and have only the most profound sympathy towards those affected by the tragedy.