We are entering the darkest part of the year. As we do so, appeals for donations grow louder and more pointed. We are reminded of the meaning of the looming midwinter festival. The claims on our philanthropy and charity arise from home and abroad. And they ever increase, responding to crises that arise sometimes from the hands of man, as in Syria, sometimes from nature, as most recently in the Philippines.

The natural world will keep throwing disasters into our path. Droughts, floods, winds, earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes: there’ll be another along shortly.
They seem to be increasing in both occurrence and severity. This year alone we’ve had an asteroid breaking up over Russia, drought and fire in Australia, lethal flash floods in the US, droughts and floods and earthquakes in China...
The impact of the mega-typhoon Haiyan on the Philippines is increasingly clear. It killed thousands and displaced millions. The images are horrifying, with whole towns and cities ripped apart, their pathetic bits and pieces strewn in Haiyan’s wake like threads of matchwood and plastic bagging.
Such storms are the dark side of weather in the tropics. But there must be huge concern about their disproportionate impact on poor countries and, within their borders, on disdadvantaged communities. This unequal distribution of despair underpins the views of aid agencies that more effort needs to be expended on building capacity and self-sustaining infrastructure, in developing countries.
Things grow much more complex when we turn to humanitarian catastrophes driven by the hand of man. They too are all around, more numerous than natural disasters and more intractable too. Right now, there are major ongoing calamities in Syria, Iraq and Egypt as well as in east and central Africa and Central America... and that’s before we turn to the plight of refugees, as they struggle towards the bright lights of freedom in Europe, North America and Australia.
Stand back a moment and reflect. Popular movements that dislodged despotic and/or corrupt regimes have been widely hailed. The role of mobile phones and social media in Serbia was thought to signal a new and different political scenario, one in which democratic ideas could be dispersed and demonstrations mobilised at speeds with which the repressions of the regimes could not compete. The Arab Spring seemed to support this contention as the despotic and corrupt regimes fell one after another.
This, people claimed, marked the end of the old way of doing things and the start of the new era of citizen campaigning, reporting and acting. It was associated with blogging and social media, especially Twitter. Further, those who had seen the cost, chaos and terrors of the deposing of Saddam Hussein marvelled at the thought that if indigenous populations just had mobiles and social media they could do it themselves and introduce the new golden age of democracy...
Well, as we can see from Syria, it ain’t that easy, bud. There, the State was well organised and the population more evenly divided. What seemed like the fall of the latest domino became a sprawling, anarchic civil war, with more casualties and far greater displacement of populations than caused by the Philippine typhoon. It’s a stalemate and everyone is now looking to find a way out that will ease the burden on neighbouring Turkey, Jordan and Iran by letting the millions return to their homes. What it won’t do is oust Assad; nor will it make things better for the vast numbers who have lost loved ones, jobs and property. Most importantly, it won’t bring democracy.
In the bright light of revolution, it can be hard to remember that most people’s aspirations and demands are modest. After all, the trigger for the start of the Arab Spring (in Tunisia) was an increase in the price of bread, not a burning desire for freedom. When the Roman cynic Juvenal coined the famed phrase panem et circenses (bread and circuses) he was merely reflecting what he saw.
In the eyes of the ordinary people of their countries, the theft of national resources and a generalised murderous contempt for citizens were the principal crimes of the worst of the dictators, not the lack of democracy. While few Iraqis pine for Saddam Hussein, many would willingly trade some western liberties for the greatest freedom of all, the freedom to walk the streets and sup coffee at a roadside café without fearing a car bomb. The same is true in Libya, Tunisia and Syria. I mean, look what’s happening in Egypt right now.
Besides, the lack of consistency in Western posturing is appalling. The same people who commend democracy to the oppressed in some countries turn blind eyes to equally despotic regimes, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Workers on the stadia intended for the World Cup in Qatar have been treated so badly that even Sepp Blatter condemned it. That’s saying something. Then there’s the various Stans of the former USSR...
Why the inconsistency? Because they have oil and gas and connections and we want to secure our supplies, that’s why.
Maybe it’s time to ease off on the idea that western style democracy should be adopted everywhere. Maybe it’s more important to ensure that people can eat and sleep sufficiently and raise children in something like safety and that they can express themselves and be themselves without fearing the knock on the door. That’s a simple criterion that can apply to any State or movement, whether autocracy or theocracy.
Ridding the world of warmongers through waging war always seems futile and contradictory. There must be a better way of encouraging change. It would cost less blood and money and we’d be able to spend more time on helping the victims of natural disasters, firstly to rebuild and secondly to build in such a way that they are more able to withstand the freak weather that our western lifestyle does so much to generate...