As much as our leaders beat the drum for economic recovery and return to normal, the message I keep getting from the credible, health care community is, “Stay Home!” Covid-19 is still raging out of control. From the people who actually know best, consensus is, things will get much worse before they get better. Ironically, the people who know best have no authority. All I can do is speak for myself and from that point of reference, leadership in American government is in short supply.
Three stories come to mind. The first is about a man who wants to catch a monkey but doesn’t know how. So he hires a monkey trapper. They go into the jungle with only a short rope, a 2 gallon pickle jar and a banana. He ties the jar to a tree, puts the banana in the jar and they hide in the bush. Soon, a monkey comes along, sees the banana and reaches in to grab the food. The neck of the jar is just big enough for the monkey to slip a hand inside. When it grabs the banana it makes a full fist and can not get it back through the narrow neck. So the dilemma is, let go the banana and escape or hang on and be captured. While the monkey is trying to force a solution that secures both the banana and freedom, the monkey trapper unties the rope from the tree and collars the now captive monkey. Governors DeSantis of Florida and Abbott of Texas look a lot like monkeys on the end of a rope with fists clinched inside a pickle jar.
A story from Japan: A small village sits on the seashore. Behind the village a steep cliff rises up to the heights, covered with terraces and rice paddies. Fishermen go out fishing while gardeners tend to the rice. In the predawn a man climbs up the cliff to watch the sun rise. Far out on the horizon he sees a great tsunami wave headed for the shore. If he doesn’t do something to warn the sleeping village they will either be drowned or washed out to sea. Too far to call out, shouting an alarm would be fruitless. All he had was a lantern. So he made a torch of dry grass and set fire to the rice. Soon the whole rice crop, all of the rice paddies were blazing. Someone in the village smelled smoke and everyone rushed up the cliff to put the fire out. At first the people were angry over the loss of their rice crop but then they looked at the flooding in the village. Nobody drowned or washed out to sea. The boats were trashed but there was enough seed to plant again and boats could be replaced. The tsunami had been a disaster but they had survived. There is a moral in there somewhere.
Last, Damocles was a mythical king who dreamt the same nightmare every night. There was a great sword dangling over his head, held there by a thread. If it broke, he would be skewered like a chicken on a pike. He realized the dream was an allusion to the imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of power. Something addictive about leadership and power; you don’t want to give it up. In good times, leadership is easy enough but if you fail when times turn against your people; like a chicken on a pike. You get kicked to the curb and a new pretender takes your place.
After four months of pandemic I have an opinion, maybe biased but aren’t they all! I think I think; a combination of unique conditions have collided and a new kind of wisdom will be required. Collectively, humankind can regress to tribal hierarchy, of us versus them and we know how that narrow, self service unfolds. Or, we can push into an unclear future with a revolutionary sense of common cause. Not mythical religion or greedy economics but something really new. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what that would look like and I don’t think anybody else does either. But we have a well documented legacy of how paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology have reduced us to selfish monkeys with our fists trapped inside a jar. Nothing is static, everything changes.
The last line of our Pledge of Allegiance, “. . . with Liberty and Justice for all.” Maybe the popular (White Privilege) perception of Liberty and Justice needs a face lift. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, that liberty and justice ring of devious duplicity no less than one of our leader’s tweets. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is fairest of us all!”
I see this has turned into a rant. I usually try not to go there but sometimes you need to shake out the dirty laundry and make some noise. I missed out on the demonstrations but I did cut up some downed branches and burn them in the chiminea.
No comments:
Post a Comment