The Bombed Out Ivory Towers of our Minds

Beware. This is harsh.

The generic We in these United States often describe academic folk as living in Ivory Towers, that is, isolated from the ‘reality’ the rest of us live in.

Unfortunately, we each live in the Ivory Tower of our own mind. We can let information in or keep it out at will. In these United States, the Constitution encodes rules for behavior that allow each person to claim authority in their own life while ignoring the FACT that whatever one person does affects everyone they come in contact with either in person or in cyberspace.

We have a pandemic raging all over Earth, a disease our medical experts are still trying to understand and control.

People in these United States individually decide how they will respond to this threat.

A great many people claim the pandemic is a hoax. No measures to combat it are necessary.

A great many people claim that since the virus will kill, let it. Survival of the fittest and all that.

Some people are following the guidance of medical experts who, as I mentioned, are still trying to understand and control this disease.

Our society is in various types of lockdown to keep this disease from spreading wildly and overwhelming our hospitals and medical care providers.

In the midst of this challenge, lawsuits have been filed, including one that challenged measures to safeguard public health with respect to religious gatherings (large numbers of folks close together indoors). The Supreme Court says your right to gather for religious purposes supersedes the right to life of strangers who might die or be disabled due to being caught by this wily, dangerous virus that you deliberately spread.

The massive irresponsibility and callousness of the people living in the US have signed the death warrants of how many thousands of people?

None of our institutions of government have been able to deal with this.

Many more will die in this long terrible winter where our minds are lost, our souls are corrupted, and we spread death with glee.

We can’t discipline ourselves to do Zoom religious gatherings or keep from drinking at the local pub.

Our nails are more important than the lives of those we live among.

This temporary set of measures are simply too much for us to bear, spoiled and selfish as we are.

The Constitution backs up this behavior.

Small comfort there.