There are lot of excellent well-meaning people on this planet who take the problems of others seriously, devote their time and energy to help make the world a better place and donate their own resources to help make things happen.
I sometimes think that it would be better if their help weren't needed, that we could create a situation where self-sufficiency, or at least the capacity to be self-sufficient, were the norm. Hopeless idealism, wishing for the moon? Pick your own expression.
I am, as regularly readers know, fascinated by birds, and many bird species have a "pecking order" where the the more dominant get all the goodies and the lesser among them have it difficult to say the least.
Not sure how many brown pelicans survived the BP fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico last year, but for those that did, the usual pattern will probably continue as before. Three eggs will be laid, three chicks will hatch. The third will be killed by its two elder siblings, the oldest one will then kill the second - short of an accident, in which case the oldest survivor (but only one) will live while the others die. Human babies face problems - but not like this!
We may have brains, whether we can create a society that benefits the species as a whole is another matter. Even if we move away from instinctive behaviour (I was going to say like birds, but I can produce examples which show that the "intelligent" behaviour of various members of the crow family has evolved with time) towards more "logical" concepts, the likelihood of us eliminating "selfish" behaviour patterns (political conservatives may regard this actually as individualism, but anyway) entirely is remote.
The problems are universal rather than local.
If I want examples of many of the world's problems, large or small, I do not need to check books, periodicals or the Internet, I can observe them first-hand.
Take my wife (that is not a literal invitation!), for example.
I know quite a bit about "spousal abuse" because her former live-in boyfriend used to practise it (ever wonder why a kind if occasionally cantankerous much older foreigner should appeal to her, that may be the underlying reason). I also understand why women often clam up on the subject.
I know about the problems involved with adoption and fostering because both her parents had died by the time she reached the age of 7.
And I know quite a bit about the problems of ageing and Alzheimer's Disease as her (foster) grandmother went through both in my (occasional) view.
My wife's foster mother is a (now retired) schoolteacher in East/North-East Thailand. Her mother in turn was a Thai Lao lady. Thai Lao is a term given to people of Lao background living in Thailand. They are related to, but separate from the Lao people in the country of Laos, and their languages are similar, but not the same.
Apparently this lady was a sensible, intelligent lady who in her later years was overtaken by Alzheimer's Disease. I never knew her when she wasn't suffering from it, unfortunately. It is wretched though watching someone go through the impact of such an illness.
She had a permanent nurse to help her, but help here is often a rugged process. Gentle handling does not always get the desired results with an old person who cannot seem to wash herself or dress herself properly any more. All the affection from the people close to her would have little impact. At times. There was a distance and impenetrability with regard to motive and action that could not be explained. How you get through to such a person with the best of intentions is impossible to explain.
And then put yourself in the place of the person suffering from Alzheimer's. Could you, can you even imagine it? As rational as you are now! I find the whole concept impossible, and to use the vernacular, it is not somewhere where I even want to go. Life has to have a quality that makes it at least tolerable. Go there it is no longer the case, and there is no way back - remember that!
And yet there were some strange unforgettable moments. Occasionally my wife's grandmother would start emitting some old Thai Lao chants. Aloud, coherent and continuous, things maybe that she had acquired in her childhood that had never been forgotten. For someone raised in the West, they had a strange impact, but their cultural value should not be underestimated.
I often thought that we could have done to have a microphone and tape recorder available so that we could surreptitiously record these chants for posterity. A researcher at a local university might have been able to help. Who knows what they might have been and as what examples they might have served.
A verbal historical relic, a leftover of another, now lost, era?
It never happened and we will never know. She died three or four years ago at the age of 94, taking her chants and her savagely brutal mind-destroying illness with her. A release, a relief, but still a sad loss. My wife understandably cried bitterly the day she died - for the memory of the person that her "grandmother" had been, rather than, I suppose, the old lady that I had known.
When you have seen Alzheimer's Disease in action though, and it has no geographical boundaries anywhere on this planet NB, you can only hope that someone finds a cure before long. There are very few pleasures in growing old. At least the elderly should be able to see out their last years with a degree of dignity.
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