I’ve seen a few comments in the media recently criticizing the West [the advanced economies] for “not doing anything for the Philippines”. This is incorrect, the West may have taken but it also gives and I would have thought was clear to the vast majority of people. Thinking about it a bit more though, perhaps it isn’t clear to the vast majority of people in this new world with its fast decreasing influence of actual facts on people’s opinions. Perhaps ordinary Filipinos don’t in fact know that many of the people of the world’s advanced economies do in fact care about other people suffering in the world and that when the Philippines has a natural disaster these ordinary people in the West go around collecting clothes, blankets, food and money to send to the victims of the natural disaster halfway across the world in the Philippines. I am not talking here about government aid or disaster relief, which during the Yolanda incident amounted to aid of over P10 billion from Western governments. I’m talking about the compassion demonstrated in times of distress by individuals in the advance economies to Filipinos who they do not know, or are ever likely to know.