Thoughts of the Day - Refugees

There's a famous parable that seems relevant in today's world.

One summer in the village, the people gathered for a picnic. As they shared food and conversation, someone noticed a baby in the river, struggling and crying. The baby was going to drown!

Someone rushed to save the baby. Then, they noticed another screaming baby in the river, and they pulled that baby out. Soon, more babies were seen drowning in the river, and the townspeople were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the babies as they came down the river. As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the babies, two of the townspeople started to run away along the shore of the river.

“Where are you going?” shouted one of the rescuers. “We need you here to help us save these babies!” 

“We are going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!”

The media and politicians do a great job focusing your attention to the babies in the river. Look at all these poor refugee children! Won't you do something for the children? Compassion is such a powerful political tool, that it is easily exploited.

No one ever bothers to ask the source of the issue. Maybe we have a migrant crisis because we have completely destabilized the Middle East? If our government caused the problem, it will surely exacerbate the problem with massive migrant immigration.

As a result, we have a a perpetual cycle of babies being thrown into the river without ever taking care of the real issue. True compassion would be actually fixing the problem, even though the media and politicians will say you are a monster for not doing enough to help the babies.