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Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives, a shocked world talks of little else.

I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn't theirs.

In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is.

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.

We have a real role in how our own collective lives, our nation, and our world and society turn out. Seizing those opportunities is important, and disasters are sometimes one of those opportunities.

Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated.

I actually happened to be in Haiti right before the earthquake in 2010. I was there already with the organization I work with now, Artists for Peace and Justice, visiting the primary school that I had adopted, the Academy for Peace and Justice in Port-au-Prince. I came back, and within days, the earthquake happened.

We have witnessed the most extraordinary devastation. The magnitude of the situation is unbelievable. It's just heartbreaking.

These days, it's really been uninteresting except when disasters occur.

Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.