It helps to like your neighbor during a natural disaster

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http://grist.org/climate-energy/it-helps-to-like-your-neighbor-during-a-natural-disaster/

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“When a storm hits, there are no strangers – only neighbors helping neighbors, communities rallying to rebuild,” says President Obama in a YouTube video, looking out at Americans on the internet. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the White House has gone to some lengths to communicate its long-term strategy on disaster preparedness. You might expect the president to start a speech like this by talking about improving infrastructure, facilitating fast responses from FEMA, or even addressing environmental concerns, but instead, he led with the idea of strong communities. Which raises a question: What does neighborliness have to do with storm preparedness?

Quite a bit, apparently. A June study from the Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that towns and neighborhoods with a strong sense of social connection recovered faster after Hurricane Sandy. People living in the areas that recovered from the storm the fastest were more likely to say that others can be trusted (44 vs. 33 percent) and that the disaster brought out the best in their neighbors (81 vs. 63 percent). In areas that have had a harder time bouncing back, more people reported seeing looting (31 vs. 7 percent), vandalism (21 vs. 5 percent), and hoarding of food and water (47 vs. 25 percent).

To some extent, this is intuitive: If your neighbor brings you a gallon jug of water after a storm, you’re probably more likely to think highly of them and the future of your neighborhood. And if people are stealing stuff in the aftermath of a disaster, it’s understandable that others might feel like those people can’t be trusted. But as a matter of social engineering, it’s a little harder to know what to do with these statistics. Is it possible to force people to like and trust their neighbors?

Judith Rodin, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation and former president of the University of Pennsylvania, thinks so. “Social cohesion is a critical component of building resilience,” she said during a recent interview with The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons. “You can look at communities that are literally adjacent and see a difference. Resilience is about building these capacities before the storm, before the shocks, before the stresses.”

[Demeter]

1. It's more useful if your neighbor likes YOU

and it wouldn't hurt if the government got off its complacency and can't-do-a-thing attitude and thought more about building THIS nation than destroying, subverting and taking over and looting other nations....

Because someday, the USA might need a good neighbor, too. And it won't have any, thanks to the Bush/Obama state department policies and plans.

For that matter, just rats leave a sinking ship, the USA could find itself short of willing, productive, healthy, educated, and helpful CITIZENS, too!