Alternatives to Schools

 This was another hard and gut-wrenching report related to the COVID-19 crisis.

As schools are being closed in some regions of the developing world, child are being sent to the street, exploited as sources for cheap labor. 

While hunger is stalking children from Afghanistan to South Sudan, young girls in sex works and pregnancies shooting up in Uganda.

This happens while other sectors of society (bars, gyms, subway, etc.) have been allowed to reopen, begging the question: what is the root of all this discordance.  

Hubris

There are different ways that you can hone your position; different ways to exhibit your talents, demonstrate your wits. The ideal scenario is that you earn this position by respect, honor, and originality of your work and your character; far from sloganeering and scheming, there are ways way more effective to connect and persuade. 

Multiple times, while walking around Scaife Hall, Presby, or Monti, from lab to office, from Medical Arts to De Soto, I mentioned this to myself. 

Pandora's box

 " It is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own productions and to claim that in the face of its theories nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist. "  Excerpt from Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life 

 I think this is very relevant to the matters we deal with on a regular basis in the academic milieu. Interestingly, the story is the same where you are amongst ideological fanatics in political or religious campaigns. There is an aversion to dialogue and affinity to seal the codebook of life in your limited lifetime. The tradeoff is understandable: the state of calm in return for blinding yourself to the (often convoluted) truth.