Blindness and Earthquakes

I'm almost done reading Blindness by J. Saramago, and as I read I realize that the imaginary chaos and sense of doom in the book must be what people in Haiti are experiencing for real, now, and for a long time to come. For them life as they knew it has come to an end, and the future is even scarier.
I'm not sure yet how it all ends in the book, but when I read how they manage eventually to celebrate the very simplest things in life, precious, no longer taken for granted - such as a slow and tender toast of a crystal glass filled with fresh water, a quickly diminishing commodity, to the even rarer one of human kindness - I wonder how we lose track of these elements in our daily lives, and what price we pay for this neglect.