I really value Umair's writings and reflections, but he is way off with his analysis in this piece. Natural disasters historically, even in the United States, trigger the opposite type of behavior than what Umair describes. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, after the state and the corporations failed the people, robust to networks of mutual aid were established. A similar thing happened after the Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast. This radical improvement in human behavior is the subject of Rebecca Solnit's book, "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster." The dog-eat-dog, degraded behavior that Umair describes is what we observe under American capitalism when it is functioning in its most robust and emblematic state. How Americans behave when that wretched living model breaks down entirely is demonstrably a radical improvement to the status quo. We have a choice and we have an opportunity moving forward: We can begin to operate with more compassion, more empathy and more solidarity. Not less.