As the insolvency and frozen credit crisis has yet to unthaw, like many other Americans, I have been trying to understand it. And given my lack of understanding of economics, my metaphor to grasp its meaning has remained decidedly literary and simple-minded. As I recall, it was Ernest Hemingway's character, Mike, who went bankrupt in The Sun Also Rises. Someone asked Mike how he went bankrupt. He replied, "Gradually, and then suddenly."

This oft-quoted response for the way things happen, and are happening in the economy right now, works for me. I don't know if it helps the nation for me to spend all my days learning what has happened to the American economy suddenly. I appreciate it, to be sure, when people attempt to explain it all to me. At the same time, I have moments when the word depression, in this case, the Great Depression, overtakes my thoughts. The other day, my friend and I were talking about whether we would be capable of growing our own food in our backyards. We decided we were now thankful for the prescience of the Ann Arbor City Council in allowing chickens to live among us. We concluded on an upbeat note: we would just have to learn. And we would have to learn, and should learn I decided, why it is that this crisis has happened first gradually and then suddenly.

This got me to thinking about the ethical issue of lost knowledge and its significance. Yes, there is the obvious atrophy that occurs when the brain and the body no longer need certain practical knowledge that they previously required before in order to survive. (Why did I pay attention to the improbable ghost stories, but not to the practical campfire lessons about growing food at Camp Takona?)

Beyond individual survival, it seems to me that there is a kind of lost community knowledge and creativity on how we might think about and come up with solutions to our current economic crisis. Here are my simple-minded, but earnest (but not Hemingwayesque) questions:

1. Why is it more acceptable for us to consider it morally good for the government to come to the aid of those in a natural disaster, but not morally good for government to help when a man-made disaster occurs? So, for example, should we hold all of the employees at Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual or Wachovia, many of whom will lose their jobs, morally responsible for the disaster that has befallen them because it is not caused by high winds or surging waters? Have we lost sight of the fact that natural disasters can also be caused by humans?

2. And what has happened to considerations of employee sacrifice, especially by those who are the highest paid? So, for example, in the case of Washington Mutual and Wachovia, where other firms have absorbed them, why did all the employees collectively not think to accept lower salaries in order to keep more of their colleagues on the payroll before their takeovers were orchestrated? Why don't we think to call on CEOs and those who are at the top to sell some of their art works and to share some of their multimillion dollar retirement and bonus plans with their employees if it allows them to muddle through until the crisis eases, as a result of government aid in addition to private money infusions?

3. And why is it that it is morally acceptable and unremarkable that a private equity firm can buy up the assets of a faltering or failing business, but communities of citizens who have pooled resources, are considered harmful if they do this?

4. Further, why shouldn't we have a massive volunteer financial force to work on the government aid plan that is settled on? If we can rely on an all volunteer force to protect our nation's security, and in the process pay them as if they are truly volunteering to fight for us, then why don't we think to do this in protecting the security of our nation's finances?

5. Why have we come to rely on and wait for a few leaders to get us out of this crisis? Where is the knowledge of citizen collective leadership and accountability?

I think that the point of this is that not only are Americans facing an insolvency crisis because of actions we have taken together, we are in a knowledge crisis.

We seemed to have lost our historically documented and celebrated capacity to determine when we need to rely on collective as well as individual knowledge.

We have been so seduced by individual solutions and personal responsibility, that it doesn't occur to us to offer solutions that give us a collective stake in our communities, from our workplaces to the larger world.