Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

Last week, I briefly spoke with a physician who, learning Spanish is my native tongue, suddenly said that she does not need to learn Spanish because she is an oncologist and in her practice, “nobody speaks Spanish.”

Her statement could be seen as something positive, in the sense that the doctor was telling me that, in her experience, the incidence of cancer among Hispanics is lower than among non-Hispanics and, therefore, Spanish-speakers are less likely to see an oncologist than English-speakers.

In fact, government statistics reveal that the incidence of cancer is indeed lower among Hispanics than among non-Hispanics. However, the death rate due to cancer is higher among Hispanics than among non-Hispanics. Then, it seems the doctor who spoke with me does not speak the Spanish-speakers because they simply do not arrive to her office.

In other words, there may be many reasons, including economic and social reasons, to explain why Spanish-speakers do not access the health care system. Perhaps it is the cost of those services. Perhaps health care providers, because of their hyper-specialization, are not prepared to face the increasing and undeniable diversity in this country.

Whatever the case, what the doctor said to me, in the new context I just put her commentary, led me to think that indeed our mental world is getting smaller and smaller. We take just a quick observation of something and then almost immediately we have a short statement, with almost no possibility for further dialogue or clarification.

We have heard many times that “It’s a small, small world” (with all due respect to Disney.) It is assumed that this well-known song talks about how, thanks to technology, the whole planet is now interconnected. But what is the point of having a smaller world –geographically speaking- if at the same time our mental world is also getting smaller?

What the doctor said to me is just an example and nothing else. I am sure this doctor is an excellent professional who is dedicated to provide care to as many patients as possible. And, like her, many more doctors and many professionals from many other occupations work every day to help as many people as they can.

However, that network of help -sometimes local, sometimes global- cannot and should not hide the fact that if our world (planet) is now “smaller,” the same technology that is making the world smaller is also making “smaller” our ability to think.

For example, at a recent radio newscast in Denver, a reporter said the price of gasoline is lower in Mexico than in the United States. To explain why, he interviewed an expert who said that the price of gasoline is lower in Mexico than in the United States because those are two different countries with two different economic systems. That was the whole interview.

Do we really need an expert to tell us such an obvious thing? Perhaps we do need that kind of interviews precisely because our mental world is getting very small.