Pausing To Weep For A World

After reading about African children, ribs exposed from starvation walking past sun bleached cattle bones or eating mud makes this person weep. To add to the sadness is the inability of so many scientific experts and organizations like UNICEF, the World Food Programme, Red Cross, OXFAM, etc; to solve the world’s hunger, all of them so eager to report that donations for world food aid have dropped off creating a crisis in the Horn of Africa region.

Humans race to the moon, explore empty space and create ever endless ways in which to enrich and entertain themselves while at the same time choosing to deny or allow so many people to go without food. Perhaps this seems a harsh judgement. One would think that scientific minds would realize the world has both plenty of fertile ground in which to grow enough food for everyone and the methods by which to get that food to every nook and cranny of the world.

Maybe the world’s hangup is the world itself as it overthinks and under does solutions to the problems it experiences.

In an interview with Time’s 10 Questions, Robert Lopez, composer, lyricist and co-writer of a recent Broadway smash is quoted as saying “People try not to think about what’s going on in sub-Saharan Africa. They edit it out of their daily lives. Especially Americans. We prefer a fantasy version of Africa.” When asked about writing the tune called “Everyone’a Little Bit Racist” Lopez continues, “Yeah. My dad was a very progressive ’60′s liberal. But his mom, who came from the Phillipines — you had to close your ears at the dinner table with her and look past it toward the love. But I began to realize this is not just my grandmother. This is everybody. I think it’s sort of and evolutionary trait. People are born with the ability to make judgments. And they can’t help but use the information they have to divine something about the world they’re in. Making categorical judgments, in large helps our society.”

Tending to agree that making judgments can help society, regardless of whether they seem correct or incorrect to anyone individual, nevertheless, humans starving anywhere for any reason is reason to shed a little tear for our world. Having a Plan readily available that can eliminate all poverty in all it’s judgmental forms leaves the world without excuse and a reason to celebrate but until they do the tears of little children, will continue to flow.