And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
- Song of Myself, Walt Whitman (1892)
Let's start with the Thai boys rescue because. Of course. Finally a feel-good story. The world comes together, superheroes rescue a young soccer team and their coach in a grueling, complex operation involving superbly trained divers from around the world in a feat of astonishing teamwork. The physical and geologic challenges enthralled the world, but the spiritual and emotional components are equally compelling.
After his parents died in Myanmar when he was a young boy, the coach entered the Buddhist monkhood, where he lived for nearly a decade, a common option for destitute orphans. During their long ordeal in the cave, he taught the boys to meditate so they could pass the time without stress. Many believe that helped them to survive. The parents of the boys forgave the coach. (Can you imagine a group of American soccer moms doing the same?!) Three of the trapped players are, like their coach, stateless ethnic minorities. One of them played a crucial role as interpreter to British divers since he was proficient in English, Thai, Burmese, Mandarin and Wa. Wow all around.
There's so much to celebrate and embrace in this narrative, yet it also raises some serious questions: Why does a tale of 12 boys get more attention than the world's 12 million refugees under the age of 18? As the bioethicist Peter Singer explains in a letter in the NY Times, "Juxtaposed with this personal and institutional generosity [of working to save the boys] is our collective failure to save the approximately 7,500 children under 5 who die every day [emphasis mine] of preventable or treatable diseases...Malaria alone kills 1,000 children a day and yet just $2 for insecticide-treated bednets can prevent two people from contracting the disease." So why don't we band together the same way to help them?
It's because the more people who are suffering in a crisis, the harder it is for people to become engaged in their stories. That's because of a phenomenon known as psychic numbing: As the number of victims in a tragedy increases, our empathy,our willingness to help, reliably decreases. Even writing this I feel like a spoilsport...can't we just celebrate this uplifting story and not think about the rest? The weight of bad news right now is absolutely soul crushing.
And so we rejoice that the boys are healing well. It is because they are futballers we are told, young athletes in excellent shape. But it is as much their background and experiences that make them resilient and strong - disaster preparedness is woven into their DNA. The heroic boys are invited to watch their own heroes at the World Cup finale, but their doctors say they will not be able to make it because of risk of infection.
They will watch from their hospital beds, with millions of other viewers around the globe who will view the unlikely showdown between Croatia, the country with a population less than 1/10th the size of Thailand, and the Black, Blanc, Beur [black, white, Arab] members of Les Bleus (France), a brilliant young team composed of roughly 50% African immigrants, many of them Muslim, young men from Morroco,Senegal,Mali, Algeria, Mauritania and Guinea My favorite Mbappe, the 19 year old phenom, has a father from Cameroon and a mother from Algeria. Their legions of fans cheer them on, even as the country they represent faces growing normalization of those who spew hatred and violence against the banliesards [the out of towners].
We share a political climate where the haters are emboldened, the result of our own psychic numbing. In LA, a 92 year old Mexican man visiting his family is brutally beaten with a brick, and told to go home. A Latina wearing a shirt with the Puerto Rican flag is told to go home by a belligerent drunk who, like many Americans, doesn't realize that people from PR are US citizens. Children are ripped from their parents in the most revoltingly inhumane way. One awful story after the next...
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But on Sunday I will join the Thai boys and millions of men, women and children around the globe to watch the astonishing teamwork and fierce rivalry at the World Cup. A world both vividly generous and unfathomably cruel and indifferent. The opposite of numb is engaged, interested, responsive. I hope we can make that a gooooaaaallll for the year ahead.
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