It is Nature against Human kind.
Nature encodes itself in
DNA/RNA. It succeeds by mire geometric replication in millions of ways.
This "survival" of the fittest" strategy has generated millions,
if not billions of varieties of combinations and forms of life. One
of which is the human species. Another is the Corona Virus.
We are one species that
has rebelled against Nature and created our "Own" form of DNA
called Society and RNA called CULTURE. As we have evolved we are
following the same path as Nature (we have to because we are a part of Nature's
experiment despite our modern arrogance to think we are apart from
Nature).
Where Nature encodes its
formula for a species in the genes, Humans encode the formula for their society in Culture. A simple
society has a simple Culture with a simple technology that can be passed
from generation to generation through example and teaching. A complex society
encodes its cultural "DNA", in its physical and intellectual technology
and its cultural "RNA" in the extensive and diversified knowledge and
skill base that is taught and stored in its institutions and the members
serving them.
The current pandemic,
CONVD-19, is an attack by Nature against the Human Species. It is just
another test of the human model by Nature. These tests are coming
more frequently and globally as our numbers and our impact on the planetary
environment increases. In Human terms of time, such attacks are infrequent.
But Nature's time table they are more frequent and test our weaknesses as
an opportunity for a new variation of life. We help Nature when our population
size expands, our ease of travel increases, our social networks become
more complex and we become more depend on technology to satisfy our
individual and collective needs.
The current pandemic is
only 100 years away from the last in 1918. Between and now we have had such
plagues as polio, SARS, Ebola, AIDS, to mention only a few. Each has tested
our species' genetic weaknesses and technological adaptability.
Biological Species
adjust through Darwinian adaptation. Societies adjust through technology
adaptation. Just as different gene sequences carry the variations of the trait
that is being tested, so different social and technological structures
carry the variations of human adaptability being tested. Today, March 26, 2020
we are being tested. The question is “Will we pass the test as a Species?"
or "Will we fail the test as a Society?"
The Dinosaurs evolved
over some 200 million year and today some scientist believe survive in their
genetic adaptation as birds. Humans are mammals, We are primates.
Homo Sapiens are
one species of this general class. Just as the today's birds are represent the
survival of the dinosaur class. Homo Sapiens have been especially successful
over the past 200,000 years (more or less) because of their unique adaptation,
This is the ability to organize into complex social units, adapt our
technologies to the great diversity of the physical environments we inhabit,
adapt our cultural processes for defining meaningful problems and methods
for solving them through technological adaptation. This is the physical
and behavioral side of CULTURE.
Culture has a mental
side as well, we call TRADITION. Traditions require learning the collective
knowledge of the society and the transmission of that knowledge to the develop
the skills to use that knowledge. In the Modern Global Society, it is the
skills and skill level of a SOCIETY and Human SOCIETY as a whole that is being
tested by NATURE.
Today, this minute, we
are focused on the latest pandemic and wonder how we can survive it, as
individuals and as communities. But Nature does not care. The Virus is an
equal opportunity species that attacks the biological human host. Our
natural response to it is determined by chance and our unique DNA's
ability to ward off or to be susceptible the Virus.
Our Society and
communities, however, are complex structures represented by the supply chain of
goods and services that make the structure work. Any break or constraint in
that chain imposes boundaries on our environment. These limits determine
our ability to survive as individuals and in many cases as communities. Nature
can be and has been contained within these environments. But as we become
more unified as a species, Nature exploits these new avenues to test its
adaptations. The history of the planet demonstrates how Nature
expands and contracts and how species emerge, flourish and become extinct. We
are NOT an exception.
To assume that this
current threat will pass without a longer term cost is irrational. We must
find the opportunities that exist within the threat and exploit them if
humanity is to survive.
Pandemics, among all
species, exist because they follow the food chain. The food chain of the virus
and the food chain of the host, And the food chain of the host is the
food chain of the Species. For the human species, the food chain of the
SOCIETY, And finally, FOOD is anything and everything that the biological
individual and societal CULTURE value that sustains and gives meaning to
life.
To fight the current
pandemic and prevent future pandemic we (as a species and as individuals) must think and act
in tune with our one and only home -- Planet Earth. This struggle between
Humanity and Nature is the Biblical Armageddon. It is the test of Humanity's
ability to recreate a mythical garden of Eden or sink into the fossil record
as just another experiment by Nature. 
