DO WE HAVE A BRAIN???

     My own children will remember a version of this question as I used to ask them if they had a brain when pulling a particularly dumb stunt. Even now it provokes laughter when we gather together. But it is a tad more serious when we ask society if it has a brain, if the collective that forms humanity has a brain.
     Yesterday morning I read a story of PS 188 in NYC and the troubles it has with so many of its students homeless and transient. It writes of the supplies it has - food, clothing, shoes, etc. rather than only what we would think a school should have. I remember all the way back to my student teaching days when we would have teachers bringing in winter coats and shoes, tights and warm socks, cans of food, all in addition to the school supplies they purchased with their own money. And this is where we all went off the track.
     No, it was not wrong that the teachers did this or that principals today have to include these needs in their yearly budgets for that is reality, but it is wrong that schools have to face these problems rather than being able to concentrate on its one main job - that of educating the future members of an adult society, able to think, to read, to make their way in a world that is changing with the speed of light. But it cannot.
     Why? Because while people are busy screaming about life, killing doctors in the name of life, abusing women and their rights in the name of life, they and the rest of society have already written these unwanted results off, as babies and children with  no hope, no families, a foster system that destroys the soul and tells all who enter into it to abandon hope. And these problems, this lack of proper care for all segments of society, for proper and  well funded programs so that no one in this day and age fall thru the net and go hungry, homeless and hopeless. No parent should despair at the present, never mind the future!
      But we do not think. We do not plan ahead. We do not pay attention to the real consequences, the long and short term consequences, so our teachers and schools are into provisioning rather than education and there is nothing at present that seems to be able to fix this. One person mentioned charter schools but a school which can pick and choose, which works from a select audience of people who have food and can think of other things such as educating their children is not the same as the homeless that NYC MUST educate by law and necessity, no picking and choosing.
     Society worldwide is also brainless. Here we are screaming about whole populations moving en masse to another country, be it out of desperation for life and limb, or an economic situation that is below subsistence and they come into a situation that is just as bad, into lawless and hopeless refugee camps, into laws that make it illegal for them to work, to educate their kids, into a culture that is so different than the one they come from that the integration of the two seems to be impossible. So the clan and tribal feuds continue. So the men who have not had enlightened teachings re women and their role in the world then assault western women who are very different from the meek and shrouded and isolated women of their original world.
     And yes, while we have the occasional brave soul who steps up and out, in general this is going to be a problem that is unsolvable until we get at the root causes and deal with that rather than the resultant issues. But unless we know and feel deep within our hearts and souls and yes, brains, that we must act and act properly, the situation will only get worse. We ourselves are at war in a country where we supposedly were to have left and the soldiers with boots on the ground seem to be increasing but since we now call it a war against ISIS rather than the Taliban, it seems on the surface to be different but a rose is a rose and changing names doesn't change the truth. Is it "only" another 16 men dying in a new world or do we not really have to add those 16 to the tally from the "other" war?
     Do we have a brain as a whole? There is an obvious yearning for it else why would these apocalyptic movies which demand the union of the world to fight the problem be it infection or aliens, be so popular. It is a yearning for help that resides deep within our souls and if we do not approach it properly there will come along a dictator who promises salvation, ala Hitler and his ilk - and they are out there, just pick up a paper and read - and then where will we be. Nor can pie in the sky promises do the trick. They must have a sound and solid base in reality, in proper brain work! Nor do we want that incipient dictator , the shouter of hates and epithets to be our leader, be it here in the Village or here in the United States or indeed anywhere for that bodes ill for our fellow beings and eventually us.
     The world is a tiny place, a lonely orb in a vast universe. We must have a brain, must insist that society have a brain, that we all use that brain in a positive manner if we are to survive. It is much more pleasurable to teach a student about the timelessness of Shakespeare rather than have him or her go shopping in the school supply room for a coat for themselves and members of their families. It is easier to read an assignment, write the answers to a homework assignment when one has a table to do it on rather than the floor of a shelter or a sidewalk. It is easier to think when one's belly is full than when it is empty.
     Do we have a brain? Dear Lord, You created us, so I hope we do, but how do we get all of us to use it and use it positively? How do we maximize those who are using that brain and shuffle them to the top rung rather than the bosses who frighten and the ones who make false promises and the ones who have no moral courage? If I only had the answers.