No new year has had such a sombre start. The harrowing loss of life to the tsunami in the Indian Ocean is a stark reminder of the fragility of human existence.
Those in previous generations and the vast numbers of people living in parts of the world exposed to famine, poverty, conflict and disease had and have few illusions on that score.
The impact of this catastrophe has been greater because holidaymakers from the developed world have been victims, in a way that was not the case with famine in Ethiopia, civil war in Rwanda or Sudan, or floods in Bangladesh.
The scale of the casualties dwarfs the number lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11th or even the war in Iraq.
The deaths in Sri Lanka are rapidly rising towards the number of lives lost during its civil war over the best part of two decades, estimated at 60,000.
Would it be too much to ask that some of the resources and energy deployed in "the war against terror" could be redirected quickly towards tackling the more fundamental threats to human existence that turns life in large parts of the world into something needlessly "nasty, brutish and short"?
One World Alliance is a promotional name for a group of international airlines which includes Aer Lingus. "All for one, one for all", was the famous motto of Alexander Dumas's swashbuckling three musketeers.
Would that they were the mottos of a new international solidarity, and that the answer to the question: "Who is my neighbour?" would receive more often a generous response.
If there are western political leaders looking for moral crusades then the present disasters not only provide a focus but also stir the conscience with regard to other disasters that have been more easily ignored or written off as other people's problem.
The US already sees opportunities to mend relations with the Muslim world.
While governments are required to lead, spontaneous voluntary donations from people are just as valuable a statement.
There is nothing wrong with a response that starts out as willingness in principle and then gains momentum as the needs of the situation unfold.
Comparative figures of the support of governments published in newspapers have encouraged emulation, with initial contributions greatly improved upon.
The Irish Government, while influenced by public opinion, gave some leadership in this regard.
The very high Norwegian contribution reflects both the wealth of that country and that the UN official co-ordinating the aid campaign, Jan Egeland, is Norwegian.
It is now clear and welcome that Ireland's ratio of development aid to GNP will be substantially higher than provided for in the Estimates for 2004 and 2005.
This may go some way to healing the division of opinion that opened up last autumn on the appropriate and feasible level of support and commitment that Ireland should be giving.
Sri Lanka, a divided island nation emerging from conflict that has no close ties to the US, should be added to our bilateral aid programme so that we can provide assistance for schools and hospitals, using also the experience of our own peace process. Hopefully, the disaster will ameliorate and not reinforce division.
Modern theology finds it difficult to provide much comfort or meaning in these situations. Even high churchmen sometimes refer to "the silence of God".
In centuries past, people saw moral punishment and biblical warning in such disasters. God was thought of as an absolute monarch, to be propitiated rather than called to account over breakdowns in human welfare.
The Gospel message is bleak and uncompromising on the inevitability of wars, rumours of wars, "and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes..." The comfort offered is that "he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved" (St Matthew 24, vs. 7-8, 13).
The earthquake that reduced Lisbon to rubble in 1755 at a cost of 30,000 lives also shook the early secular optimism of the Enlightenment.
In Voltaire's Candide, the philosopher Pangloss, who still believed in the face of all evidence to the contrary that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, barely survived a botched execution by authorities looking for scapegoats.
It was depressing to see neo-conservatives trying to exploit the situation to denigrate the UN and its servants, not so much for their corruption but for their daring to speak out, whether rightly or wrongly.
The UN, for all its faults, is the international community, and, however imperfectly, tempers great-power hegemony that would often like as few self-imposed political or legal restraints as possible.
Natural disasters that do not have their cause in our environmental misbehaviour cannot be prevented, but in many cases their effects can be mitigated by early-warning systems. Their promised speedy installation would have the benefit of restoring confidence to Asian coastal areas that rely on tourism.
From any disaster, there is usually something to be salvaged in the response.
In this case, it would be the reordering of priorities by the international community and by governments to concentrate not just on conflict prevention but on basic economic, health, environmental and governance problems facing large tracts of the world.