NATURE

I posted an overly casual remark on my Facebook page the other day, and was not unjustly chided for my idle pronouncement. I wrote that I woke that morning "wondering whether Nature is not trying to tell us something with this [corona]virus" that is currently spreading its disease through much of the world and causing such alarm. My critic, if I may quote him, was quick to remind me that what I wrote was "just a wishy-washy way of invoking superstition (angry gods) into a medical emergency that has nothing--nothing--to do with some supernatural entity dispensing lessons for humankind."


Fair enough. My lapse, as I see it, was in suggesting that nature was "trying" to tell us something, implying intention that I myself do not subscribe to. I do, however, believe that we have something to learn from this natural--yes, it's natural--occurrence. The virus, as I understand it, originated with bats, and was passed on to humans. It is now spreading in ways we do not fully understand and have been unable to control. We have a lot to learn, and nature, even without intention, is perforce our teacher. We need to understand it better.

 Things to be learned: the nature of the virus and how it is communicated; what we must do to find a cure for those affected; and what we as human beings can do to prevent it from causing untold damage to our health and, not less, to the economic and societal underpinnings of our global civilization.

 I went further, in my post, to suggest that nature was using this virus as a kind of revenge for the damage we ourselves, as a species, are wreaking on our natural environment. Which is, as my critic kindly pointed out, absurd. But I still hold to the notion that this epi- or pandemic, call it what you will, does offer us the opportunity to learn more about the way in which inhabit the earth that is our only home and how we can exercise our stewardship with greater wisdom and mutual responsibility. 

It's not superstition I intended to invoke, but science. Not "angry gods", but conscience and consciousness. We need to learn to do a better job of living in the world. We have the capability to render it uninhabitable, and ourselves extinct.