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Freddy, what they meant about the Great Depression is that as many as 14 million Americans died as the result of poverty or starvation, and the diseases that accompany these conditions. Now if my pathetic little communications and biomed stocks don't pick up soon I might as well read Mad Magazine and have a good laugh before I pack my belongings into the Volvo for a long stay under the freeway overpass, like I am almost beyond help, okay, and thanks for the suggestion, but what I meant about parenting is that there is a strong animal instinct to protect and love a child. The reason I know it is an instinct is that it is almost irrational--the sudden desire to nest, the self-knowledge that you would unhesitatingly throw yourself under a city bus to save your child's life without even thinking about it, these things come suddenly when one becomes a parent. I am certain that there are people who are too damaged to feel these things, and these parents are neglectful and abusive. But they are in the minority, definitely, here or in the third world. You only have to look at all that horrible famine film from Africa to see parents overcome with grief as they cannot feed or nurse their children, and are forced to watch them die. I cannot imagine being that helpless, but I can tell from their faces that their grief is very real. I think that what happens in societies where the barest living one can eke out must require the participation of children, gathering food, farming, working in factories, is that there is a gradual numbing process that parents undergo as they are forced to make "Sophie's Choice" kinds of decisions about survival of each individual and/or the group welfare. Again, I believe a lot of this is based on animal instinct. When you add in religions that are very dominating against females and oppressive against children--religions that keep women prisoners and cause children to be beaten as a means of control--finally parents who have very limited choices in the first place but must survive to reproduce--again,the animal instinct--reluctantly push their older children out into the world because they have no choice. Imagine being a parent standing in the doorway of a hut and saying goodbye, watching a nine or ten year old child leave home forever, walking to the closest major city to live in the streets and try to survive because you don't have the resources to feed or care for him any longer yourself. I think there is incredible pain in that, and that these parents do feel that pain, and that the horrible choices people who live in abject poverty are forced to make is exactly what I believe needs to be changed with economic reform if this planet is ever to be a truly civilized place. |
