Imagine an ‘outside observer’. From, say, Sirius. Who had just arrived. Didn’t have enough time to become familiar with what’s going on here.
Thailand. Ballots had been cast in November. A party had lost. And pretends, without proof, that the elections had been rigged.
“In his first public comments after the coup, Gen Hlaing sought to justify the takeover, saying the military was on the side of the people and would form a “true and disciplined democracy”.” GETTY IMAGES
When the parliament was about to be convened, and the electoral results formally confirmed, the backers of the loosing party – which had happened to be the army, declared martial law and annulled the electoral results. The leading general announced in public that the measure had been adopted in pursuit of a ‘real and disciplined democracy’.
The US. Ballots had been cast in November. The looser pretended, without proof, that the elections had been rigged.
When the parliament was convened to certify the results, a mob had stormed the House of the Parliament, at the bidding of the loosing President. Order was finally restored and the dully elected President installed into office.
What would the ‘outside observer’ think about our planet? About us…
What if their job is to asses whether we should be allowed to roam the Galaxy? To be entrusted with some very powerful technological ‘secrets’. Which would help us solve some of our very stringent problems. Feel free to name a few…
Well… Money doesn’t get spoiled as easily as bananas do…
On further consideration, money can be understood as a tool with many uses. Hoarding, for instance. Bananas, among other things …
And, as with all other tools, the responsibility for its use falls squarely on the user, not on on the tool itself. Tinkering with the tool won’t change that, ever.
My point being that monkeys would also hoard bananas if bananas were hoard-able. There’s nothing wrong with that. For as long as the hoard is meant to feed the hoarder till the next crop, of course.
Hoarding is bad only when done for its own sake.
And this is something for philosophers to study, not for scientists. The teachings of the Chicago School of Economics had been very scientific yet following them was what brought us where we are now. Into a very uncomfortable cul-de-sac…
Blindly following them… mislead precisely because of their scientific nature!
From none in particular. From all of them, since all viruses are nothing but information!
‘Huh???’
Most biologists consider viruses to be something ‘in between’. Not exactly ‘life’, since they cannot replicate themselves, but something more than mere matter.
Only this approach sets very straight limits to how we understand life itself. Or should I rather use ‘narrow’ instead of ‘straight’? ‘Narrow’ as in ‘not wide enough’ minded?
“Information which perpetuates itself”.
Does this sound right for you?
We. humans, are individual human beings. ‘Social’, indeed, but, nevertheless, individual. It’s our individual-ness which sets us apart from our nearest cousins. Chimps and bonobos. It’s our individual-ness which sets the parameters of our world-view. That being the reason for our attempt to define life as a characteristic of the individual organisms which happen to be alive.
This being the moment when I feel the urge to direct your attention upon a seminal book.
Hmmm… the Origin of Species…
If evolution is about ‘Species’, then what about life itself being more about species than about individuals?
What about life being more about the process through which information is passed along from one generation to another than about an individual organism being alive or not?
In this sense, ‘virus’ would belong to the realm of the living, right?
“Crows are the hominins of the bird kingdom,” “Like our own ancestors, they evolved proportionally massive brains by increasing both their body size and brain size at the same time, with the brain size increase happening even more rapidly.” Dr. Jeroen Smaers
Crows have also witnessed our evolution.
All life transforms its habitat. Living things actually pass ‘segments’ of their habitat through their digestive systems. Digest them. Consume the useful components and discard the rest. And, finally, excrete whatever their metabolism had turned the useful components into. Urea and carbon dioxide, to name but a couple. For us, mammals. Other living creatures contribute something else to their environments.
40 years ago, the car manual was about how to adjust the carburetor. Nowadays it starts with a stark warning. “Don’t drink the cooling liquid!” Then it teaches us how to use the infotainment system and how to adjust the electric seats…
In those times, most of us – regardless of what country we lived in, had nothing fancier than a washing machine. And a TV set capable of receiving no more than 12 channels. But we had a lot of time to spend with our friends and relatives. Nowadays, our houses are choke full of appliances designed to make our lives easier… So we break our backs working to pay for this paraphernalia! And we get so tired in the process that when we finally get back home, late at night, we’re so exhausted that we cannot do anything else but watch one of the 200+ channels our cable feeds into the huge TV which dwarfs everything else in the living room.
Meaning that we wrap up most of our days watching yet another mind numbing news-bulletin… which informs us about how bad tomorrow will be… unless we follow whatever advice that channel is determined to ‘sell’ to us!
A good place to start understanding what Covid had done to us is the cemetery.
A man had died. A good man had died. Of old age. Covid had nothing to do with it.
But his beloved wife, and one of his daughters, could not attend his funeral service. They had tested positive while he was in hospital.
On the other hand… On my way home, I stopped by to see an old friend. He lives alone and has a rather frail health. No relatives and, due to his relativelly old age, only a couple of able-bodied friends. It’s a good thing that we have phones. If I’ll ever be quarantined simultaneously with his other friend, he’ll depend exclusivelly on delivery services….
Do you really think they’ll make it? Does it really matter? What I think about it? You know what the alternatives are… Even they know it. Some of them, anyway… Those who agree with Darwin. Either… or… I know, I know… After all, this is the umpteenth time we’ve had this conversation… If they make it, we’re here to welcome them. If they don’t, we’ve lost our time watching them… They’ve wasted our time, actually. They’re the ones calling the shots… we’re here only to observe… Yeah, except for they don’t see the whole picture! They don’t know about us, for starters. And they don’t know what we’re here for…
Nobody asked me, yet, ‘why do you still keep this clock on the wall? It’s arms never move, the pendulum is frozen…’
Those who really know me have learned that I hate ‘ticking’. And that I’m rather accurate at telling time without any instruments. My son’s friends – the only ‘other’ people who come into our house, haven’t noticed. Or cared enough to ask…
Yet the story is interesting enough.
The ‘object’ was manufactured in the USSR. More than 50 years ago. I’ve no idea whether my parents bought it or it was gifted to them. Point is that I remember it ticking, and striking every half hour, during my entire childhood. Until I took my fate into my own hands! Into my left hand, actually. I sneaked it into the clock and bent the three rods inside away from the hammers. The clock continued to strike but the sound was muted. Still audible but way less annoying.
My parents said nothing. Maybe they didn’t like it either… The ticking remained, though. But the difference from the previous situation was so huge that it didn’t bother me anymore.
After a few years I moved out so I ‘forgot’ about it.
A decade or so later, my father and I decided to build a house. My mother had died, I was the only child… It was obvious for both of us that, sooner or later, we’ll have to ‘camp’ back together. He was already on the wrong side of 60…
When he moved in, the clock followed suit. I hanged it on the wall. Attempted to make it work. Something had happened to it while in transit. Left it be, for a while. At some point, my father asked me to take it to a repair shop. Brought it back. The guy had not only fixed the mechanism, he had also bent back the ‘chiming’ rods. Couldn’t sleep that night! Told my father the racket must stop. He agreed. He hadn’t slept either. After bending, again, those damn rods, we sat down to watch TV. The couch is right below the clock. After five minutes, we looked at each other. I stood up and stopped the pendulum.
‘But why don’t you just throw it away?’
It’s not that simple. It reminds me of my childhood. I don’t hate the object, only the sounds it makes. I’d have to hang something else in it’s place. There’s a hole in the wall and a ‘shadow’ on the ‘white wash’. And, above all, its stillness is an excellent reminder.
That even a broken watch is able to tell the exact time!
If it still has its arms. If you happen to look at it at the right moment! And only two times each day…
Romanians have a proverb. ‘Each of us makes his own bed’. Like all other popular sayings, this one is only partially true. In many cases – in most, actually, our individual ‘leeway’ is limited by those who are higher than us. In many cases, again, those decision makers have climbed there with our full ‘blessing’. In a sense, the above mentioned proverb is true on more than one ‘levels…’
According to Alan Hayek – the guy who claims the copyright for the relevant entry into the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the wager doesn’t make any sense unless you consider that God is, however remotely, possible.
Now, that I grabbed your attention, let me point it to the subject du jour.
The face mask!
To wear or not to wear one…
Strangely enough, many of those who believe in God are adamantly refusing to wear a mask. They don’t actually see God yet they find the world as THE argument for His existence. And, at the same time, they refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of the Covid 19 pandemic. Which had already killed, or hastened the death of, more than 1.2 million people worldwide.
OK, almost no mask – specially the ones worn by us, civilians, is 100% fool-proof. But wearing one is far better than none at all… OK, most of us would weather the infection with relative ease. But some would die! Then why spread it around?
For that, if you didn’t already know, is more than half of what the masks do! They make it harder for those of us who already have it – but don’t know it yet, to spread it around.
Help prevent the spread of COVID-19 by protecting yourself and others. Keep in mind that you may have the virus even if you don’t have symptoms.
You still consider it to be a muzzle?
Why? Only because it is mandated by the government? And you don’t trust your own government? While living in a democratic country?
But since when do you rely on your government to tell you which is the sensible thing to do?
Being married doesn’t come with such a huge array of ‘perks’. Specially when you know how to cook a meal. Wash your underwear. Use the vacuum cleaner. Own a dishwasher…
The main ‘attraction’, for me, being the presence of the person I married. The daily interaction with her. Sex included!
No, we don’t have it every day! It would be nice but we’re not sexual athletes… Which brings me to the point I was trying to make.
We’re currently isolating because of Covid. She had lunch with some of her coworkers, one of them had it – a-symptomatically at that moment, and now all of them are quarantined. Rather mild symptoms for all of them, a week into the whole thing.
‘Isolating’ means that we no longer share a bed. That we no longer eat together. That when we need to talk to each other we wear masks and stand as far apart as the geography of the room allows it. And, of course, no sex!
Which, for both of us, is a real loss! Specially for me… I’m almost 60 now. I don’t expect to remain ‘fully functional’ for very long. Five more years? That would be some 250 weeks… Loosing two of them for nothing isn’t my idea of a ‘fair deal’!
Hope I made you laugh. Or at least smile. Even if this isn’t a laughing matter!
nicichiarasa 