Importance of communication

I'd been thinking over the last day or so about the importance of communication -- and the problems that can be caused when it goes bad, is incomplete or is dropped out all together.

There's a lot that could be said about it, but just as one item of interest, I came across an article about the application of communication principles to problems such as disasters, specifically by the Scientology Indonesia Relief Team.

I had a good friend do similar work after the tsunami of a couple of years ago and his experiences match what this article describes. The team he was with would go into a village that had been destroyed and they'd find the people there apathetic and barely able to take care of themselves. Within a week or so of application of assists technology (described in the article linked above), the entire tone of the village would change with people getting active and starting to rebuild their lives.