Mindlessly Minding Our Own Business

In the movie K-PAX, the visiting extraterrestrial ‘Prot’ says to the clinical psychiatrist interviewing him: “On K-PAX, everyone’s children’s wellbeing matters to everyone, as everyone takes part in rearing everyone else’s offspring.”

I’ve always found this concept appealing: Unlike with humans, every K-PAX-ian child’s good health seems to be in everyone’s best interest.

“It takes a village to raise a child.”

At the risk of being deemed Godless thus evil (or, far worse, a socialist), I strongly feel that the wellbeing and health of all children needs to be of genuine importance to us all. And healthy, properly functioning moms and dads are typically a requisite for this.

But I'm not holding my breath, as I've found that most people are pessimistic and/or hostile towards such concepts. To many people, such ideas, if ever implemented, would be too much like communism thus, by extension, somehow the end of the world.

Meantime, too many people will procreate regardless of not being sufficiently knowledgeable of child development science to parent in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. They seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they (potential parents) will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.

As liberal democracies we cannot or will not prevent anyone from bearing children, even those who selfishly recklessly procreate with disastrous outcomes. We can, however, educate young people for this most important job ever, even those who plan to remain childless, through mandatory high-school child-development science curriculum.

After all, a mentally as well as physically sound future should be EVERY child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. And the wellbeing of ALL children needs to be of great importance to us all, regardless of how well our own children are doing.

Mindlessly ‘minding our own business’ often proves humanly devastating. Yet, largely owing to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, however, the prevailing collective attitude (implicit or subconscious) basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or ‘What is in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support social programs for other people’s troubled families?’

While some people will justify it as a normal thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving OIIIMOBY can debilitate social progress, even when social progress is most needed. And it seems this distinct form of societal penny wisdom but pound foolishness is a very unfortunate human characteristic that’s likely with us to stay.

Still, we can resist that selfish OIIIMOBY. If I may quote the late American sociologist Stanley Milgram, of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
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[i]“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.”
—Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marcellus[/i]