Quotes of the Day

Perhaps it was because the tsunami hit during Christians' season of goodwill. Perhaps it was because, with the aid of the Internet, a great natural disaster could be viewed in something close to real time. Perhaps it was because so many of the stories were so heartbreaking—children torn from their parents' arms, husbands and wives separated by a cruel sea. For whatever reason, the tragedy in Asia has sparked a scale of giving that has never previously been seen. At the meeting in Jakarta to prepare for a formal donors' conference, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed to the world for $977 million to fund a relief effort for six months. That sounded ambitious, but by the end of last week, governments and multilateral agencies had pledged more than $5 billion, while private citizens around the globe had offered an estimated additional $1.2 billion. Though the history of disaster relief tells us that not all those pledges will be turned into clean water, rebuilt houses and new fishing boats, the world has just shown itself in one of its better lights.

Offering comfort to strangers seems to be a universal human characteristic, perhaps because sooner or later, somewhere or other, we are all strangers. Christians know the parable of the Good Samaritan, and remember that Jesus told a man asking for the key to eternal life to "sell all you possess and give to the poor." Buddhism, Sikhism and Judaism revere—indeed, require—acts of charity. A Muslim proverb runs: "Prayer carries us halfway to God, fasting brings us to the door of his palace, and alms giving procures us admission." But religious faith is not essential to help those in need. Last week, secular places like Britain and Germany experienced extraordinary levels of private donations. In China, collection boxes were set up in airports and shopping malls, and the Red Cross had collected $5.5 million by Jan. 6.

At times, there was something almost unseemly about all the giving, as nations sought bragging rights for their big hearts. HK LEADS THE WORLD IN TSUNAMI RELIEF, read a front-page headline in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. On a U.S. radio program, I was pressed by an interviewer to agree with her that Americans were more generous than anyone else. I demurred. I yield to nobody in my admiration for American benevolence, but being prepared to dig deep into your pockets is not a phenomenon of American exceptionalism. Of course, generosity manifests itself differently in different societies. Franck Hourdeau, of Action Against Hunger, a French charity, told a TIME reporter: "In France, charity is seen as the role of the state, and in many other countries, as the role of the individual." In the U.S., it's sometimes argued that private aid is more genuine, more of the heart, than cash given through general taxation. But that case rests on the mistaken belief that people everywhere treat taxation—and the governments that collect it—with the same suspicion as American conservatives. They don't.

Stunned—and moved—by the pledges, few bothered to ask the curmudgeonly question: Is it possible that the world is being too generous? The scale of the suffering in Asia is of biblical proportions, but the four nations most affected by the tragedy—Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand—are not among the poorest of the poor. Thailand and India have said they do not need outside financial aid, partly out of national pride, partly because they think they are rich and resourceful enough to cope with the disaster. (Indeed, some of Phuket's amenities would not shame an island in the Mediterranean.) If measured by income per head, Indonesia, the hardest hit, is more than four times as rich as African nations such as Congo and Ethiopia, and nearly twice as rich as Sudan, where starvation and war threaten millions of people. (Indonesia would be richer still if corruption had not polluted its economy.) A week after the tsunami, Doctors Without Borders stopped taking donations, saying it did not want to lobby for operations that were already fully funded. "There's no moral difference between the extreme, day-in, day-out poverty in Africa, and the situation in Asia," Jamie Drummond of DATA, which lobbies for aid to Africa, told the Washington Post. "If we're not careful, one will carry away from the other."

In a world that really had something to brag about, such a diversion would not happen. The curmudgeon's question would be answered not by stopping our gifts to Asia but by remembering poor people and places when they don't make the headlines. If we are as compassionate about Aceh in the summer—when malaria, a preventable disease, will still be endemic there—as we have been these past few weeks, then we can pat ourselves on the back. If we remember just one lesson that we have all now learned—that clean water saves lives—then the world's generosity to the tsunami's victims may yet be epochal. For now, though, let's go easy on the self-congratulation.

• Michael Elliott
• There are lessons to be learned from the world's generosity