Just as human life itself arguably originated in Africa, so did the proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child."
The meaning of this philosophy is as subject to individual whimsy as is a sailboat that may be buffeted to and fro in submission to the roiling sea.
One man might say that the proverb warns against sheltering; the ideal child is one that has been weathered by the storms of a thousand realities.
Another might claim that the proverb promotes classism; a child's place in the social hierarchy must be beaten into him by his betters to take effect.
In any way that one might take this phrase, one must accept the overall benevolence of the entity that is "a village."
Perhaps the village is an altruistic teacher with a stick to cull weakness and a carrot to hurry the child forward; perhaps the village is a cornucopia of wisdom and experience from which the child may and must feed.
In either case, the feeling that surrounds "a village" is that of love: the village's love for the child. It may be tough love; it may be love that is suckled from a mothering entity's teat.
What I question is not the fierce, almost animalistic protective feelings that any village of people may develop for one child.
I know that a group of humans will and often does protest any injustice that may strike one individual; for example, examine the case of Terry Schiavo, the comatose woman whose right to unending physical life support was debated to the point that supporters of each side still chased one another in philosophical circles long after the question was resolved.
When compared to the relative apathy for many plights that cause the masses to suffer, the support garnered for Schiavo is nothing short of super-human.
One of the interesting facets of humanity is its active disregard for the logic that it itself created. The human race's concern for a misfortune that plagues one of its own is inarguable; every day the media outlets flaunt their latest rape victims and missing children in attempts to bolster the collective public sympathy that will raise each outlet's ratings. A human foreign to this planet might assume that the concern for a single person's tragedy would be exponentially increased in ratio to the increase in people that a tragedy affects.
However, it can be deduced from a variety of historical media horrors that the opposite is true. As the number of people stricken with a sorrow or torment increases, the concern show by the mass population decreases sharply in response. By the point at which the afflicted number a million or more, there is but a very small percentage of the public that has not ceased to care.
A philanthropist might cry out in protest of this opinion, but the factual responses to many media cases hold open the curtain that reveals the horrible complacency of a human heart. Take the media coverage of the casualties in the American war with Iraq. In the United States, the accidental death of one American soldier is a tragedy. Flags may be raised over an entire state for the death of a single American casualty; ceremonies will be held. When two American troops are killed in the span of one day, the media response is tremendous. However, what so frequently goes unmentioned but for a single line at the bottom of a statistics report is the number of Iraqi soldiers that have been killed on that same day. When the dead American troops number two, the amount of dead Iraqis may number well into the thousands. The dead of Iraq are not simply dead soldiers; innocent bystanders and civilians are often slaughtered by the dozens in suicide bombings or in daily crossfire between troops. Even though Iraqi civilians have died and are dying by the hundreds of thousands, these death tolls are tucked away. Are these enemy civilians not human beings? Are they some alien species of rodent that may be sold and sacrificed in lots like rats sent to laboratories "for the common good"? Yes, the American public silently cries with the turning of their cheeks. They are; they are!
I am not saying that this lack of concern for the multitudes is an attribute unique to Americans. For a time last year, the British media was plagued by updates regarding the unknown whereabouts of one girl, Madeleine McCann, who was snatched away in Portugal. Although her situation was regrettable, there is no justification for the overflow of articles and broadcasts that updated the entire world on exactly how lost she was. That space could have been devoted to other crises across Britain: crises that directly affected a much larger portion of the country than one family alone. Therein lies the dilemma that I attempt to prove; humankind seems able to develop overwhelming sympathy to the plight of one individual. However, when faced with the sorrows of thousands, it is unable to extend itself and is forced to give each of the larger mass a mere sliver of the enormous concern birthed for one alone.
Perhaps the neural makeup of the human race is similar to that of a rather myopic computer. There is only so much memory that may be devoted to a single folder; if there is only one file within that folder, than that file is blessed with the ability to detail itself and expand to its virtual content. However, if that folder is packed with hundreds of thousands of files, then each of those files would be lucky to snag a single-spaced Microsoft Word page to spell out its own bare minimum. If one attempted to expand the amount of memory given to each file, the programming system itself would implode from the strain. These tragic cases survived before, when no memory was given to them and no one cared; they can cope now.
Maybe one day, some day some beneficent power will purchase extra memory space for the human race; then again, the knowledge of all the sorrow in the world might overwhelm the system. With such a small capacity for massive pain, perhaps there is a reason that the proverb only mentions one child per village.
Jessie Matus is a junior at Oneonta High School.
Print this story
E-mail this story
