So, a dozen children were trapped in a cave in Thailand, and the whole world mobilized to get them safely out. You may perhaps have heard something about it, unless you were trapped in a cave yourselves.\r\n
People are odd, aren\u2019t they? The world sends expertise, mechanical power, aid, attention, all sorts of things. The situation is desperate, there are miles and miles of underground passages, many of them totally lightless and filled with cold water. Time is limited, both because the rainy season has arrived and any day the rest of the passages may fill up with water and drown them all, and because the air will eventually run out. Every obvious rescue method carries unacceptable risks. Days later, we get those kids safely to the surface. It really is amazing and inspiring what people can achieve. Isn\u2019t it? I am quite serious about that. I think it\u2019s moving that people can find their attention riveted on the plight of total strangers in places they\u2019ve never been nor thought of. I think it\u2019s incredible that we humans have developed the tools and the brains to make it possible to save every one of those kids.\r\n
And it\u2019s also true that floods in Japan killed 179 people<\/a> at the exact same time. There are half a million people in Venezuela with malaria, and there are a million cases of cholera in Yemen. There\u2019s no real point in listing this stuff\u2014every day there is something going on somewhere that would require much less effort and expense to rescue many more than thirteen people. The attention of the world can\u2019t focus on thousands as easily as on a dozen, and that\u2019s just how people are. Your money is needed\u2014needed\u2014right now by people in desperate conditions, and that was true last week, and will be true next week, and you\u2019re really only going to make that donation when something gets your attention. Maybe it\u2019s terrific that people are like that! That is, after all, how we get these kids out of the cave; that\u2019s how RAICES (the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services<\/a>) with an annual operating budget of $7 million, got donations of three times that in a month. Sure, if they had that money last year, it would have gone to good use, and almost certainly there are people who would be alive today that are not because RAICES and their counterparts had only limited funds. But many people\u2014most people\u2014don\u2019t give by any rational analysis of efficiency<\/a> but instead by the emotion of the moment. And when I\u2019m talking about being amazed and inspired, it\u2019s by people\u2019s emotions as much as by their actual achievements.\r\n Look\u2014people do, in fact, provide aid to millions of people in danger and in need, every day. That could be amazing and inspiring as well. Are you moved? Do you think it\u2019s incredible? Because me, not so much, every day. Maybe I ought to, but I don\u2019t.\r\n Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In which Your Humble Blogger is about a week late for this post, but since y'all never forgot about Baby Jessica you probably still remember the kids from last week.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-item"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19727,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19726\/revisions\/19727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}