AvsTgp

In certain ways you are right and I do feel horrible for them, and some of my comments were just out of anger ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/na.../04coping.html
...........
But the floodwater did not bring the people of New Orleans together in the same way earthquakes or fires often do. It drove most of them out. And in the apparent absence of any functioning authority to coordinate security and rescue efforts, those left behind lapsed into a kind of corrosive social anarchy that will color their already painful memories with shame or horror, experts say.

When caught in frightening situations without clear rules, most people look to others around them for guidance in how to behave, psychologists say. The rules that normally restrain people's actions - "Do not break into a store and steal a plasma TV," for example - fall by the wayside when hundreds of other people are ignoring them. And in a variety of experiments, researchers have shown that a single leader can drive group behavior.

"That person may do something good, like rush to help in an emergency, and others follow," said Suzanne Yates, a psychologist at Lehman College in the Bronx. "But if people start looting, and nothing happens to them, you get a kind of cascade, and a new norm of behavior is established, which makes it more crucial for those in authority to take some control."

It does not take long for misdemeanors to become major crimes.

"Our experiments have shown that you can get people to commit immoral acts one step at a time," said Elliot Aronson, a psychologist at the University of California in Santa Cruz, in an e-mail message. "People who would never dream of stealing a TV set might be inclined to do so if they first stole some water, bread, cereal, milk and so on."

In an analysis of the 1977 blackout in New York City, researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute concluded that small-time criminals began the looting but that "within two hours," the researchers wrote, "it became apparent that the situation was not going to end quickly, and thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens joined in what was to become the largest collective theft in history."

In that situation, however, hunger, thirst and fear were not driving people to take the basic necessities of life, which was part of the situation in New Orleans.

In the long recovery ahead for New Orleans, law-abiding residents who went beyond small acts of self-preservation to larger transgressions might have more than water damage to repair. "We know from studies of soldiers that people who are perpetrators of what they consider to be atrocious acts need tremendous compassion from others to reclaim and re-own their humanity," Dr. Marmar said.
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all they needed is to help eachother and then people would have all been ashamed and wouldnt have snowballed into such mayhem!
and what the fuck are they taking TV`s for?? they dont even have a house to put it in! where were they taking it??
However I dont wish that on anyone and my heart goes out to all out there and I hope to god they all are safe and sound!