HUMANITY VS. NATURE: COVID-19

 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.