I visited the Fox River this morning.  After several days of prolonged heavy rain, the river overflowing its banks, roared over the dam, a maelstrom of froth and brown waves.  The sound was indescribable.  Like you I prefer to think of Nature as benevolent, hospitable, leaning in my direction with good will.  Another image capturing the warm thought about Nature is of the dark earth covered with a sprinkle of fallen magenta Redbud petals.   Who would not prefer this point of view than that of a swollen river, lashed to frenzy by a swift flowing current?

Neither point of view is true independently of the other.  Both are true.  The benevolent, the rational and the irrationally violent are paradoxically true.  The trick is not to get caught in denial……

While standing on the river bank I thought out loud and discussed with my son our present circumstance in this country.  Why are many smaller colleges, and universities so dependent upon the income from athletics?  Some schools will surely go out of business when these programs are untenable at the start of the fall season.

How do we explain the large number of young students from low income households that are dependent upon the public schools for two meals a day?  Why could parents not afford to adequately feed their children before the constraint of quarantine and social distancing? And now with the likely loss of a low paying job…?  These two snapshots of contemporary life in America do not add up.  As the saying goes, ‘what is wrong with this picture?’

How has the sphere of education, so mission-critical to modern society, become so underfunded that side-sources of entertainment revenue, at the high end, and government food subsidies at the lower end, are necessary to keep it afloat?

Why do large segments of our population have absolutely no ‘reserve,’ enough income to ‘tide them over’ in a hard time?  Hard times will come.  This coronavirus is like a massive flood surge, a overflow of violent dark water that is sure to sweep away many businesses, institutions, and individuals.  Why is the government under normal conditions a resource for tenuous existence?  Why does higher education depend, under normal circumstances, upon athletic facilities and programs and events, — which have little and maybe nothing to do with the effort required to become a well educated young adult?

What is wrong with us?  Is covid-19 the reckoning about which we have been in denial?

Here are some lines from Albert Camus, which if read carefully, give a strong clue about the mal-allocation of resources in our country.

Every form of collectivity,
fighting for survival,
is forced to accumulate
instead of distributing its revenues.

Whether bourgeois or socialist,
it postpones justice for a later date,
in the interests of power alone.
…it arms and rearms
because others are arming and rearming.

Slavery becomes the general condition,
the gates of heaven remain locked.
Such is the economic law
governing a world that lives
by a cult of production,
and the reality is even more bloody
than the law.

Excerpt, The Rebel by Albert Camus p. 219