"This is wrong. This is the United States of America."

Law and order is gone, gunmen are roaming at will, raping and looting, as people die of heat and thirst, bodies lie rotting in the street, with no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America.

Front-page photos of the dead and desperate in New Orleans, devastated by the Hurricane Katrina , almost all of them poor and black have shaken assumptions about American might.

The issue is being studied closely by American ethicists and social psychologists who opines that rules of human behavior including respect for others' property and for social order itself dissolve quickly in desperate circumstances like the storm's aftermath. Ethicists call it state of nature -- an atmosphere without rules or infrastructure, where the needs are so great that anything goes.

It is under extreme distress that the true character of a person emerges. This reflects the culture of the person and as a whole of the society he belongs.

The looting and chaos in New Orleans reflect a culture of violence. In South Asia, where the tsunami killed more than 30,000 not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged or raped.