Scavengers of tragedy

Of all the means of transport, the train has always seemed the most comfortable to me. It takes you there without you having to drive it; if the tracks wind, you don't notice them like on a bus; the carriages glide along as if the ground were flat. Unlike airplanes, it doesn't expose you to the vertigo of heights, and even if the journey is long, you don't have to sacrifice your dignity going through security like at airports. I've spent half my life on trains, from the worst commuter lines to high-speed trains where they offered me cava. A unique kind of coexistence always takes place; it's a space where you can observe other people's lives, attitudes, and ways of doing things, far removed from those familiar to us. On the last train I took, last week, a woman with a Brazilian accent was asking for help stowing her enormous suitcase, shouting, "Isn't there a man here?" "I'm not a man," I told her, "but I can help you." Other times, I've been offered a helping hand. That someone is willing to do it fills me with hope and confidence. As we help each other carry suitcases, unload strollers, position wheelchairs, and offer an arm for an elderly woman to lean on, we will preserve the most important and most human evolutionary trait of all: empathy.

I saw on television the testimony of a young woman who explained with desperate helplessness that she hadn't been able to do anything for some of the victims of the Adamuz train crash. Her shock resonates with me; I recognize myself in her pain, just as I recognize myself in the pain of those who lost loved ones. The account of another survivor echoes in my mind: how silence fell inside the overturned train car, and all I heard were unanswered phones. Mothers, fathers, friends, girlfriends, or husbands calling after the news broke, desperately hoping that you weren't related to one of the thirty-nine, later forty-three, victims. I imagine the pounding heartbeats of those pressing the phones to their ears, waiting for a response.

And what a stark contrast between the constant tension we've grown accustomed to, the polarization that dehumanizes and demonizes, the climate of aggression that forces us to be either defensive or offensive—what a contrast all this global violence has with the people who rushed to the aid of the wounded, to lend a hand. Neighbors in their bathrobes carrying blankets, emergency personnel trying to clear the wreckage, paramedics, the entire body of professionals who dedicate their lives to rescuing strangers. They don't ask, of course, before helping, where those asking for help are from, what they think, or who they vote for. The instinct to care is the strongest of all, not only noble, but essential for our collective survival. It doesn't even need to be justified by a system of moral or religious principles; it arises sufficiently in the face of the suffering of others.

It's clear that the opposite instinct also exists, which must necessarily be in the minority, or we wouldn't be here. It's the instinct of psychopaths who were born without the organ of compassion and believe and claim that we are all like them, selfish by nature. The cynics, the perverse ones who feed on the hatred of some towards others and foster the nihilistic chaos of gratuitous violence and inhumanity. They always appear after tragedies that shock the majority, like snails after the rain or like vultures circling their dying prey. In the Adamuz accident, it was the Vox supporters who rushed to the still-warm corpses to spread absurd ideas about the causes of the catastrophe. I try to avoid the poisonous excretions of these hate-filled people as much as I can, and yet I still end up finding out. I hope they bite their tongues and leave the dead in peace.