Facing the Numbers
We seem to live in a time of ungraspable statistics. The recent million mark of Covid deaths in America is certainly an example. The troubling war and refugee statistics coming out of Ukraine would also qualify.
Let me add another number that might be far more of a gut statistic: Probably about 100% of us fall short of fully processing this kind of math. Statistics like this create their own kind of cognitive dissonance. To read about tragic numbers in war-torn Ukraine, for example, while drinking coffee at breakfast is a collision of realities at some level. Like a broken seismograph, one philosophy professor recently remarked, our minds fail to register numbers this big. And so in our removed, far-away places we construct mental exercises: Refugee numbers equal to the state of Massachusetts. Displaced populations the size of Pennsylvania.
Listen to a war correspondent in Ukraine about all this and their answer is not ambiguous: we still need to know the numbers. We need to know the truth and full measure of humanitarian right violations. We need to know the extent of the loss of human life. But at the same time we know that these awful tallies are anything but human. Fixing numbers to lives lost, mass burials and homes destroyed never feels quite right. They are, to borrow a phrase from Jewish author Jane Yolen, The Devil’s Arithmetic.
Of late I have been trying to get my head around the troubling numbers of Ukraine’s children: Of Ukraine’s 7.8 million children almost two-thirds have been displaced by the war. Over 2 million have fled the country altogether. Most of these are now essentially fatherless; they are also particularly at risk for human trafficking.
It is in the face of these numbers that our seismographs might seem completely unrepairable.
Lately however I am being reminded that another approach to understanding these numbers might just have to do with seeing Ukraine as broadly as possible — to remember turning beyond the headline numbers to the larger stories of Ukraine. And to remember that even as the war enters its 4th month we don’t tire of the mental effort to put faces to this war-torn area.
I’ve been told, for example, that Ukraine also happens to be a country that takes its education quite seriously. Ukraine, according to statistics in happier times, is the 4th most educated and literate country on the planet. It is a number for which the face of Ukrainian Boxer Vitali Klitschko might represent quite well: in addition to being one of the most decorated heavy-weight boxers in history he also happens to hold a doctorate degree. (He is now serving as mayor of Kyiv — nicknamed “Dr. Fists” no less.) And apparently in Ukraine even comedians get law degrees. (Volodymyr Zelensky) They may seem like odd details, but as an educator and parent it lends some empathy and understanding to another distant number: over 1,000 schools have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. And the fact that Ukraine’s education is again at a standstill — all this after 2 years of very broken Pandemic education.
But if there is something else I learned about Ukraine that helped closed the distance it was strangely this: statistically the most popular name for boys in Ukraine is Alexander. As trivial as it is, this is a statistic hit that home for me because I once met a young Ukrainian boy named Alexander. He and his Ukrainian parents camped across from us at an Ontario campground over 15 years ago and this was the only Ukrainian family I have ever known.
Alex, I won’t forget, was a happy little wanderer who meandered over our campsite quite regularly. (We had four children for him to play with.) One night we were woken at 3:00 am by the sound of a boy lost in the woods behind our camper who we all assumed was again Alex. At my wife’s prodding I finally ventured out to rescue the 5-year-old only to discover that it wasn’t Alex but ironically my own son who happened to be the same age. (He had sleepily rolled out of the tent camper and found himself a little disoriented in the woods.)
It was an odd story with a haunting reversal that I have been thinking about lately. You see my son has just graduated from college. Young Alex, if I’ve done my math right, is being drafted into war.
It was something I was reminded of in a Ukrainian picture I recently saw that went quite viral. It was a snapshot of 4 young, Ukrainian college-age boys with scared faces and new rifles slung over their shoulders. It was a heart-rending picture. It also stood in sharp contrast to the graduation pictures I recently took of my son and his peers wearing very different expressions, college diplomas in their hands instead of Kalashnikovs.
I suppose statistically there was about a 20% chance one of them carried the popular name of Alexander. A far higher percentage chance they would all see some kind of armed conflict.
Keep praying for (and remembering) Ukraine.
