The orphan-crushing machine

Like most people, I’m a sucker for a solid feel-good story. The algorithm knows that well because my news feed on social media and stories sent to my phone are littered with them. 

Whether it’s a father returning home from the military to surprise his family, deaf people hearing for the first time through cochlear implants or a community rallying around a sick child, if someone is paying a good deed forward, I’m happy to read all about it.

But there are limits to those types of stories. Not all of them are nearly as sentimental as you think. Some of them, in fact, are only made possible because of the cruelty, greed or indifference of others, or perhaps the entire system that makes the need for drastic measures necessary.

To explain it better, I use the metaphor of the “orphan-crushing machine.”

Think of it this way. For many of these heartwarming human interest stories in America, you read a headline that says something like “Man raises $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine.” Sure it’s great that the man was able to save those 200 orphans, but why is no one asking why an orphan-crushing machine even exists or why someone would need to pay $20,000 to prevent it from being used?

OK, that was a hypothetical situation. Orphan-crushing machines don’t actually exist, but I have plenty of real-life examples of these types of issues. 

A CNN headline recently read that a teacher battling cancer ran out of sick days, so school employees showered him with their own sick days that were donated to assist him. Sure, it’s great that his co-workers were so generous to help out someone in need, but why is there a system in place where someone can run out of sick days if they get cancer and instead has to rely on the generosity of their co-workers?

Here’s another one. In November 2021, a 13-year-old boy from Jackson, Mississippi, used his “Make-A-Wish” to feed the homeless from his community for a year. It spawned the creation of Abraham’s Table, a service that provides meals to the homeless every third Saturday. Again, it’s amazing that this boy thought of aiding others who were less fortunate, but why must it take the wish of a child facing a life-threatening disease before people are sprung into action to help others? 

CNN ran another headline about an 8-year-old boy who sold handmade key chains for $5 each, which raised $4,015 and helped erase the lunch debts of all the students from his school as well as some other students in nearby schools. I think a more honest headline would read “8-year-old does months of manual labor so his friends, who are children, can afford to eat without incurring debt.” Why is lunch debt even a thing? If a child is hungry, that child deserves to be fed. It’s great that something was done to assist those children, but the problem will still be there the following year when other hungry children can’t pay for school lunches. All they did was kick the bucket down the street a bit.

The hits just keep on coming. A big story in 2001 involved Kenny Waters, a Massachusetts man who was wrongly imprisoned for 18 years for murder. He was freed after his sister, who was a high school drop out, went to law school, working tirelessly with The Innocence Project to exonerate him through DNA evidence. Why is this being framed as a feel-good story? Eighteen years of the man’s life, the most important thing every mortal being has, were taken away from him. We, as a society, incur a moral debt that’s impossible to pay for every second an innocent person is in prison. 

I don’t have enough room in the newspaper to bring up all the examples of the dark sides of supposedly feel-good stories, but the dystopian side become more easily noticeable with each passing day and with each story that I read or sometimes have to write.

There are plenty of solutions to these types of problems, but they’re often solutions that people don’t like to talk about. They involve things like raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the wealthy, stopping corporations from using tax loopholes or replacing America’s medieval health insurance system.

Instead, people prefer to try to put a Band-Aid on the issues, to treat the resulting symptoms of the problems instead of the root causes at the source.

You hear that? I think there are some orphans that need saved from the orphan-crushing machine again.