Carlos K. Quinones: Unorganized thoughts on disaster relief, human need, and human comfort

There was this one time I was reading Game Informer (a videogame magazine) when I was 12. In this particular issue, there was a questionnaire about how “hardcore” of a gamer the reader could call themselves, much like those self tests one would find in some insipid women’s lifestyle magazines (such as Cosmopolitan). I distinctly remember one of the questions from the survey (as I did complete it, of course), which read “have you ever ignored chest pains to continue playing a videogame?” I think I answered “yes,” but that may have been me just padding the answers with questions I could get away with lying on for a higher score.
Thinking back on this, and the concepts of how it relates to human need or human comfort, I start to wonder how one would go about defining needs. Could one lump a desire into the category of needs? Going by that logic, the question was really asking the reader if they would ignore something that causes discomfort (and should be somewhat troubling) in order to fulfill a “need.” Obviously, chest pains are uncomfortable, but is ignoring them can lead to further problems, and should be a clear indicator of a need (to see a physician), which probably should supersede the need to gratify oneself. And, given the pro-videogame bias of the magazine, they were probably hoping that most people who answered could honestly say they ignored chest pains to play video games.
Human need, I believe, should be considered more important than human comfort, primarily because need refers to something that is required to survive. Food and clean water is a need, as without chemical energy and nutrients, the body cannot function or renew/repair itself. Shelter is a need, as protection from the elements and outside forces can not only cause ill health but also lead to stresses. Arguably, there are other things that humans need (such as other people, love, and the like).
Human comfort, I feel, should be secondary to need. However, discomfort can be an indicator that a need has arisen (as in the example above, in this case being a possible heart, lung, or stomach problem). People can derive comfort from different things, making it difficult to define comfort that can fit every person; needs, however, are generally the same with everyone. Someone may find it very comforting to eat a fresh durian fruit, whereas many people would think that the mere odor that the fruit itself emits is positively rancid (myself included; I feel that it smells like ripe burning tires). An even better example is relaxing at the end of a long day with a beer and listening to The Eagles, as more people can relate to that than a reference to a fruit that they may never even see.
Now, in a disaster situation, human need and human comfort shift in priority; comfort gets escalated on the hierarchy of things you would want to deal with, as the unfulfillment of basic needs is making those affected increasingly uncomfortable. The homes that the victims used to have, and may have had for generations, which may have been all that they did have to call their own, may have been destroyed, along with everything that the victims held dear. Family members may have been trapped in those collapsed structures, which would cause even more distress. And possessions, while fleeting, are a prime example of something that people desire, and that which may bring them comfort. To see all of them burn in a fire, or be crushed in a landslide, is incredibly painful for the individual. To see it happen to an entire nation, as with the nation of Haiti, is a horrible sight to behold, not only for those there, but to the entire world to see.
In such a situation, the people may be hungry, worried, tired; they may need to be comforted in addition to having basic needs fulfilled. Part of the work in a relief effort for such a situation entails counseling to those grieving, as well as seeing workers trying to dig people out of the ruins of such a disaster; it gives hope to the victims that maybe they may see family members caught in the rubble come out alive and well. Anything that can be done for the wellbeing of the people caught in the tragedy is attempted, even if it may be only in vain.