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Tuesday, June 28, 2016

My Analogy

Imagine the whole world was a human body. Every part of that body, every organ, every limb, every cell, represented the people of the world. Mostly the body is working together to keep itself healthy, but there are parts of that body that don't function so well. Say, for example, the little finger on the left hand of the body wasn't quite right. There was something wrong with that little finger and it wasn't fully connected to the rest of the body. It was made up of 'bad' cells. And one night when the body is sleeping the little finger of the left hand attacks the ring finger beside it. So the rest of the body suffers the loss of it's ring finger because of the actions of the little finger. What does the rest of the body do? It gets rid of the little finger because it doesn't trust it to not damage other parts of the body. What was disconnected from the body due to, let's say, a 'glitch' becomes fully disconnected from the body because it was amputated because of the fear of further risk. And a body can survive without the little finger on the left hand. And it can also survive the loss of it's ring finger.

Let's say though, that when that little finger was disconnected from the rest of the body it just withered away to nothing. It rotted and decayed until eventually there was nothing left. That's pretty much what happens to things like that. But do the 'bad' cells just wither and rot and decay until they too disappear? Probably not. Because those 'bad' cells are part of the body as a whole, not just the little finger. So the finger is gone but the 'bad' cells just find a new part of the body to reside in. They go to the big toe on the right foot. The same thing happens and the body is now missing two fingers from the left hand and two toes from the right foot. All of a sudden the body doesn't trust itself. Where organs used to work together for the greater good they now fend for themselves and trust no other parts of the body as they may contain traces of the 'bad' cells. But they don't work so well on their own. They were designed to work together. The whole biological system of the body is in chaos. Limbs are amputated until the body is immobile. Eventually everything fails, with the heart the last to give up.

How can the body prevent this from happening? How can the body cut out the 'bad' cells without becoming completely disconnected from itself? How do we stop the little finger from starting all this nonsense. I guess I don't know anything for sure but maybe the little finger felt disconnected for a reason. Did the rest of the body stop to think about what that reason may be, or did it act quickly and impulsively out of fear and a necessity for self-preservation? Did it do a good job of preserving itself? Did it believe that the little finger would surely act again and so it was better off amputated? Did it ever stop to think that, since it was the same body, connected to the same heart, that maybe it was just as responsible for the actions of the little finger as the little finger was? Or did it find blame and fear easier to comprehend than compassion and understanding?

So the body is the world, and each organ and limb are the people in the world and they are all connected, except some don't feel or understand that connection so we get rid of them because we think they're going to poison and spoil eveything. Except that the 'bad' cells are part of the body as a whole, not just specific limbs and organs. And when things get tough, complicated or scary, instead of trying to understand where these 'bad' cells came from we try to eradicate them by any means necessary, until eventually the whole system collapses, because we don't know how to understand or look after ourselves. Not really. We don't see that we are all just one big body connected to one big heart and, one day, if we don't try to start listening and understand each other, that heart will stop beating.

2 comments:

Rob Z Tobor said...

I think I am too old to read this as my body stopped working correctly ages ago, Luckily my brain is too old to notice that the rest of me is rubbish. . . .PHEW

hootchinhannah said...

That's definitely preferable to my predicament, which is, my brain still thinks it's 10 years old but my body thinks it's about 80 years old!