I mentioned being a fan of the early episodes of The Big Bang Theory. I loved the Sheldon Cooper character largely because he resembled a number of the cloistered academics I knew in real life, even if his traits were a bit exaggerated. In a favorite series moment, his colleagues notice Sheldon giggling for no apparent reason as the group is enjoying lunch. They prompt him to explain which he does as follows: he has dialogues in his head that he describes as sparkling and well above the usual banter he has in real life.

I’m no brainiac like the Sheldon Cooper character. Still, I must admit that some of the most stimulating discussions I have are with myself. No, I don’t actually talk to myself (most days at least), but I do routinely engage in internal and silent dialogues that strike me as remarkably insightful and even provocative. And yes, I realize that therapy might help.

It hit me that these internal explorations might make decent blogs … at least a few of them might. Let’s try and see. When and if I share one in the future, I’ll call it The Occasional Conundrum followed by the date … like I did with this post. What follows is a typical internal dialogue:

… When I want to shut off my brain, I watch sports (which is rapidly losing favor with me as even college athletes have become professional hired guns) or true crime shows. I’m not sure why I favor the latter unless it is because I learn something from exploring the depths of human depravity. To explore the darker side of humanity, crime and politics are always good bets. However, politics simply are too horrific, even for a depraved pervert like me. I’m also taken with the sophistication of recent crime detection technologies and the extent to which officers of the law will go to identify the miscreant of some dastardly deed and secure some closure for the victim’s loved ones. Most of these shows end with a feel-good triumph of righteous justice. It is the devotion of the forces of law and order to securing justice in some cases that caught my attention earlier this week.

In a recent show, the body of a female is discovered buried in a remote area in 1977. The case remains a who-done-it for many, many years until an informant contacts authorities and leads them to the killer. You would think … case closed. Justice, though delayed, done.

But no! One issue remains unresolved while available technologies have improved. Even though the killer has been caught, the deceased has never been identified. The killing was a random act, so even the evil miscreant had no idea who she was. The remainder of this program centered upon the search for the victim’s identity. We are now talking some three plus decades after the event despite searching diligently for years after the murder to discover who she was.

A cold case detective eventually took up this task and worked with the latest scientific methods to identify the girl (who turned out to be a teen runaway). Through dauntless, tireless, and costly efforts employing the latest DNA technologies and a considerable amount of manpower, he was successful. The show ended on a note of satisfaction when the few remaining kin got to know what happened to this person they barely remember from some four decades earlier.

As I’m noodling this story later, I’m thinking … that’s nice. Still, I’m troubled. Now, I know of many other crime stories where the search for the victim’s remains becomes more complex and expensive than the search for the guilty party or parties themselves. In many instances, this part of the mystery is more convoluted and demands more resources than all else combined.

Perhaps I’m callous. However, after a reasonable point, the resources expended on finding decomposed remains (often little more than a few bones) to return to a family seems rather pointless to my cold, calculating soul. There is an important opportunity cost in all this. Could we not use that energy and sunk resources more profitably … improving public safety or crime prevention or even victim compensation in the first instance. Some of the searches done in the more difficult cases boggle the imagination, involving hundreds of people and months upon months of time and effort … all for what’s strikes me as little more than a symbolic result.

And so, in my head, I debate whether these extraordinary human and institutional efforts make sense. We talk about scarce resources all the time. And yet, in some cases, we spend remarkably little time thinking through how we expend some of those resources or how we might redirect them to more worthwhile ends.

But there is a larger issue here, at least I think there is 🙄. As human animals, we are more easily attracted to individual tragedies than more abstract dilemmas and challenges. Whole communities respond to a missing child with hundreds of volunteers spending hours slogging through fields and woods often in hopeless searches. Or look at the enormous effort expended to rescue a child trapped in a well, with the whole country seemingly fixed upon this singular tragedy. In the end, we applaud these heroic community efforts.

And yet, we know that untold numbers of children are facing horrific situations absent any attention at all. Many are undernourished, abused physically or emotionally, neglected, or exposed to depraved and drug-addled lifestyles. Out of sight, and out of mind, the lives of these children are diminished inexorably on a daily basis. Any help directed their way comes way too late in the process. In short, we respond to micro-tragedies but ignore macro-level challenges that impact far more victims. We even resist imposing a few more taxes on the uber-affluent to support services for vulnerable children. After all, those extra taxes might force the 1 percent to make a difficult decision … should their next luxury car be a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or (God forbid) merely a Lexus.

Something to consider at least.