As I hunker down and shelter in place, I am set to reflecting on this crisis caused by a new Corona Virus and producing the disease known as COVID-19. The virus will kill hundreds of thousands or more before it is done and before, according to the latest research, it comes again, perhaps annually. In my reflecting I take in the economic devastation that has followed in the path of this virus and the suffering it is bringing to the lives of so many. Whether it infects or not, it is touching most everyone to some degree.

            I hear the idea that we humans are at war with the virus. I hear clamoring that we will win! We always do! Politicians love the war metaphor. It is meant to mobilize resources against the common enemy and to recruit the winning spirit. Hope is energized.

But the metaphor of war, like war itself, enables consolidation of power, further extraction of wealth from the many to the few, while deepening the reach of scrutiny, security, and secrecy.  War is beneficial to the powerful whether as metaphor or as combat.

I don’t resonate with the war metaphor. For me, nature, even at its most difficult from a human perspective, is always a teacher.  If we don’t see this, then we miss the lesson. Simple as that.  Corona Virus is nature doing its thing. What lesson might we learn if we see the virus as teacher? As I write this, I see the Pope say that the pandemic is one of nature’s responses to humans ignoring the climate crisis. This is a good example of a different perspective than “war.”

At the same time, President Trump tweets, “Once we OPEN UP OUR GREAT COUNTRY, and it will be sooner rather than later, the horror of the Invisible Enemy, except for those that sadly lost a family member or friend, must be quickly forgotten. Our Economy will BOOM, perhaps like never before!!!”

As you can see, the hegemony of human exceptionalism turns a deaf ear to nature except to exert human power and engage in unlimited extraction of resources. This is the operation of unbounded greed that has created the conditions leading to the climate crisis, decimating environments, extinguishing untold number of species, diminishing biodiversity, melting the glaciers, raising the oceans, and all such devastation. The unforeseen consequences created are what we are beginning to experience: unpredictable catastrophes, exponential changes that will lead to uninhabitable conditions and likely, very likely, the extinction of the human species.

The Pope says the pandemic gives us time to pause, to lower production, to lessen greed and to find ways to return to being part of nature. Good words. Falling on deaf ears.

The powers that be call for a rapid return to “normal.” This normal is precisely the problem that has so damaged our own nest that humanity’s collective suicide is all but assured. All for the short-term benefit of the few and long-term disaster for the many.

The Corona Virus Crisis is at present saturating attention as the collective event takes over in ever greater degree the center and periphery of most everyone’s attention. This is a natural process and the more so if the “event” is threatening. You probably feel the preoccupation verging on obsession. This too is natural. It is obvious that this crisis is foregrounded forcing other crises into the background—even those that are more threatening.

While the Corona Virus crisis is front and center in most everyone’s conscious experience, the crises we refer to as “climate change,” continue and deepen and become more severe and more threatening. But at present the climate change crises receive scant collective attention.

In addition to the Corona Virus crisis itself, there is of course the “fall out” from the crisis in the form of economic losses, extreme unemployment and collapse in many markets. Governments everywhere are taking unprecedented measures to shore up economies, to rescue collapsing markets, and in doing so generating degrees of debt beyond comprehension. The magnitude of this debt is such that it cannot be repaid and will be causing its own crises further down the road.

Trump councils forgetting about the horror of the invisible enemy even before we discern the full impact of the virus. This head-in-the-sand, feel good idea is wrong headed and dangerous.

What I am seeing in dreams is that the virus is a call to attention, to deep observation and reflection on what we humans have done to ourselves, and to begin preparing not for the next big boom, but for even greater horror.