Tragedies like the tsunami are emotional levellers. But the effect does not last long. As soon as the shock sinks in - in less than a month in this case - everybody goes back to their original sides, and all bets are off. Ordinary individuals take up their relatively numb existence while leaders return to the business of protecting and justifying their peoples' collective prejudices, fears and interests. Take the Swedish. They lost more compatriots than any other non-Asian nation, and their first reaction was to offer generous financial aid. That is, after the public outrage when politicians failed to cut short their Christmas holidays to deal with the crisis. The catastrophe has since been qualified as the worst in the nation's history. (Sweden is traditionally neutral during war, and so escaped the great European massacres of the last century). Naturally, things have sobered up dramatically since then. The Swedish government has demanded answers. No more Swedish tourist dollars for Thailand, it seems, until the country provides satisfactory answers as to why no warning system was in place and why the rudimentary signals that did indicate an earthquake had occurred never reached Swedish tourists. Swedish survivors initially praised the courage and generosity of individual Thai people. Then things turned sour. Swedes and other privileged foreigners seemed to feel that it was unjust to find themselves at the mercy of Thailand's poverty and technological backwardness; wrong to be subjected to the consequences of the Thai people's unassertiveness and fatalism. Yet those features are, in part, why rich foreigners like the Swedes found Thailand such an attractive destination. Understandably, but unfairly, the relatives of rich victims complained that disaster areas were not combed for missing bodies as thoroughly as the World Trade Centre site had been, following September 11. That is, they compared a scattering of remote beach resorts in a poor country with a small site in one of the world's richest cities. Similarly, once the pressure of international public opinion convinced the US leaders that it should pull its weight, the nation did so with impressive vigour. Inevitably, though, it was only a matter of weeks before the force of spontaneous sympathy was hijacked for the purposes of political spin: outgoing US secretary of state Colin Powell used his sound-bite opportunity in Sumatra to underline that Americans were bringing aid to Muslims (as an obvious counter-balance to events in Iraq). During her confirmation hearing, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, said she saw the tsunami as a marvellous opportunity for her nation to help patch up the country's imperfect image overseas. Dr Rice is right to recognise that what happens to people when they are at their most vulnerable makes more of a mark than many accumulated years of everyday kindnesses. But it is calculating (perhaps, mistakenly) to talk openly and with enthusiasm about the benefits for America of such suffering, just as it is disingenuous of well-off Scandinavians to be outraged by the post-tsunami chaos in a developing country. The tsunami catastrophe - amazingly, almost history already - gave the world its first opportunity to express near-global solidarity. For a few moments, the inhabitants of the so-called global village had the potent experience of sharing the same thoughts and feelings - and the prospect of a more promisingly cohesive future. But the village illusion did not last long. The powerful, rich nations quickly pulled rank over the relatively powerless. This is only to be expected, I suppose. Humans are infinitely better at handling suffering than they are at handling power. Jean Nicol is a psychologist specialising in issues of cultural identity and change in an era of globalisation