John Wayne's, Idea of Reactance and Monomaniacal Pursuit Of A Single Idea

It's not so surprising some folks here in the US are acting as they lost their "freedom":

Why are people being so cavalier in the face of clear instructions from the nation’s top scientists and public health experts?

Behavioral scientists have long studied the idea of reactance, a concept pioneered by Jack Brehm in 1966. In his words, psychological reactance refers to the idea that when individual freedoms are “reduced or threatened with reduction,” people tend to be “motivationally aroused to regain” those freedoms. That is, when you tell me what to do, a part of me feels compelled to do the opposite.

In short, when someone tells you how to behave, you feel your liberty threatened and “lash out” not only by ignoring the advice but by leaning into behavior that goes against what is being suggested. And while more work is needed to understand cultural differences in this domain, it seems possible that in countries like the U.S. that champion personal freedom as a virtue, people might be more predisposed to reactance behaviors than others. 

In many instances, reactance is a quirk of human behavior that is simply frustrating or annoying, and sometimes even amusing. However, right now, reactance is deadly. The advice coming from public health experts to wash our hands, stay indoors, cancel even small-group events, and stay six to nine feet away from others (especially those who are sick) is based on a combination of science and an abundance of caution about a deadly virus we still don’t know a great deal about. So our desire to “push back” against this sound guidance is driving us toward behaviors that will strengthen the public health tsunami that is just around the corner.

One of the greatest insights against too much libertarianism was captured brilliantly by M. Mitchell Waldrop in his book Complexity: Emerging Science At The Edge Of Order And Chaos. It was based on "Locked-In Syndrome" where we might choose the wrong option and stuck in it forever:

And the reason for that passion, as Arthur slowly came to realize, was that the free-market ideal had become bound up with American ideals of individual rights and individual liberty: both are grounded in the notion that society works best when people are left alone to do what they want.

"Every democratic society has to solve a certain problem," says Arthur: "If you let people do their own thing, how do you assure the common good? In Germany, that problem is solved by people watching everybody else out the windows. People will come right up to you and say, 'Put a cap on that baby!'

In England, they have this notion of a body of wise people at the top looking after things. "Oh, yes we've had this Royal Commission, chaired by Lord So-and-So. We've taken all your interests into account, and there'll be a nuclear reactor in your backyard tomorrow."   

But in the United States, the ideals maximum individual freedom - or, as Arthur puts it, "letting everybody be their own John Wayne and run around with guns." However much that ideal is compromised in practice, it still holds mythic power. 

But increasing returns cut to the heart of that myth. If small chance events can lock you in to any of several possible outcomes, then the outcome that's actually selected may not be the best. And that means that maximum individual freedom - and the free market - might not produce that best of all possible worlds. So by advocating increasing returns, Arthur was innocently treading into a minefield.

Coronavirus pandemic has exposed that "minefield" in this country when some are so blinded by idealogy that they cannot even comprehend common sense (leave alone science).

One might argue, the people who aren't following a stay at home orders are uneducated libertarians. I call that bullshit. It was the libertarian idealogy that bought us to this day - reducing funding for  CDC, no sense of precautionary principles while imagining every problem on earth can be solved by markets. Most of the current day libertarianism is unrecognizable from mystic powers to sheer magic.

Even with this unlimited cognitive dissonance of "educated" libertarians, there is hope. Niskanen Center was formed in 2018 to avoid any kind of ideologies. Here's their motto on an alternative to idealogy:

There is a word for the monomaniacal pursuit of a single idea. And that word is fanaticism.

[---]

At this (rather late) point in my intellectual journey, I am of the same mind as the Italian political philosopher Norberto Bobbio:

There were only a few of us who preserved a small bag in which, before throwing ourselves into the sea, we deposited for safekeeping the most salutary fruits of the European intellectual tradition, the value of enquiry, the ferment of doubt, a willingness to dialogue, a spirit of criticism, moderation of judgment, philological scruple, a sense of the complexity of things. Many, too many, deprived themselves of this baggage: they either abandoned it, considering it a useless weight; or they never possessed it, throwing themselves into the waters before having the time to acquire it. I do not reproach them, but I prefer the company of others. Indeed, I suspect that this company is destined to grow, as the years bring wisdom and events shed new light on things.

We can use more brains with a sense of the complexity of things.

Wisdom Of Wolves

Each and every wolf has a story to share. Can we be trusted to listen? In a time when humans are wantonly and brutally exploiting wolves and numerous other nonhuman animal beings, it is essential that we pay very close attention to what they are saying to us as they try to adapt to a world in which their interests are far too often and universally trumped “in the name of humans.” It’s pretty simple: We rule, other animals have to do what we want them to do or they suffer the consequences of our narrow and anthropocentric demands that seriously compromise their well-being and their very lives.

[---]

Their lives and behaviors mirrored our own contradictions and complexities: social hierarchy tempered by compassion, contention mixed with cooperation, the admirable side by side with the abhorrent. Among all their qualities there were many we admired, but one stands out more than any other, especially considering all that has befallen them at the hands of man. Wolves can forgive. 

- Jim Dutcher, The Wisdom of Wolves: Lessons From the Sawtooth Pack

And of course, the book which is so close to my heart is Brenin and his life with Mark Rowlands captured beautifully in The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness.

What John Gray wrote about Mark's relationship with Brenin is pretty much how Max opened doors for me which I never knew existed - all that without language.

The Philosopher and the Wolf is a powerfully subversive critique of the unexamined assumptions that shape the way most philosophers - along with most people - think about animals and themselves. When Rowlands bought a wolf cub for $500, and lived with it for eleven years, he ended up writing: 'Much of what I learned, about how to live and how to conduct myself, I learned during those eleven years. Much of what I know about life and its meaning I learned from him. What it is to be human: I learned this from a wolf.' 

A part of Rowlands's life with Brenin was sheer delight: 'The wolf is art of the highest form and you cannot be in its presence without this lifting your spirits.' Beyond its beauty, though, the wolf taught the philosopher something about the meaning of happiness. Humans tend to think of their lives as progressing towards some kind of eventual fulfilment; when this is not forthcoming they seek satisfaction or distraction in anything that is new or different. This human search for happiness is 'regressive and futile', for each valuable moment slips away in the pursuit of others and they are all swallowed up by death. In contrast, living without the sense of time as a line pointing to an end-point, wolves find happiness in the repetition of fulfilling moments, each complete and self-contained. As a result, as Rowlands shows in a moving account of his last year with Brenin, they can flourish in the face of painful illness and encroaching death.

How Brenin made Mark a better person:

If we humans place a disproportionate weight on motives, then to understand human goodness we must strip away those motives.  When the other person is powerless, you have no self-interested motive for treating them with decency or respect.  they can neither help you or hinder you.  You do not fear them, nor do you covet their assistance.  In such a situation the only motive you can have for treating them with decency and respect is a moral one: you treat them this way because that is the right thing to do. And you do this because that is the sort of person you are. 

But when I remember Brenin, I remember also that what is most important is YOU that remains when your calculations fail – when the schemes you have schemed shudder to a halt, and the lies you have lied stick in your throat. In the end, it’s all luck – all of it – and the gods can take away your luck as quickly as they confer it. What is most important is the person you are when your luck runs out.

Max is not with me now but he was and will always be my impartial spectator - calling my own bullshits and navigating to do the right thing.

I am grateful that I came across and read about Brenin and Mark when Max was little. I think, that helped me to live with him enjoying each moment as "complete and self-contained" in itself and enjoying those moments for what it was. And I will continue saying until my last breath:

'Much of what I learned, about how to live and how to conduct myself, I learned during those thirteen years. Much of what I know about life and its meaning I learned from Max. What it is to be human: I learned this from my Max.' 

The Story Of The Chinese Farmer

The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.

- Alan Watts in Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks 1960–1969 (via Brain Picking)


The Story of the Chinese Farmer from Sustainable Human on Vimeo.

How Are We to Live in an Atomic Age? - C.S Lewis

C.S Lewis wrote this timeless essay in 1948; we all should learn a thing or two from his wisdom:

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Thank you, sir!

Precautionary Principle - Redux

Just in case for people who don't get the essence of it; Taleb narrows it down:

We called for a simple exercise of the precautionary principle in a domain where it mattered: 

Interconnected complex systems have some attributes that allow some things to cascade out of control, delivering extreme outcomes. 

Enact robust measures that would have been, at the time, of small cost: constrain mobility. Immediately. Later, we invoked a rapid investment in preparedness: tests, hospital capacity, means to treat patients. Just in case, you know. Things can happen.

This Pandemic Is Not A Black Swan - Nassim Taleb

Furthermore, some people claim that the pandemic is a “Black Swan”, hence something unexpected so not planning for it is excusable. The book they commonly cite is The Black Swan (by one of us). Had they read that book, they would have known that such a global pandemic is explicitly presented there as a white swan: something that would eventually take place with great certainty. Such acute pandemic is unavoidable, the result of the structure of the modern world; and its economic consequences would be compounded because of the increased connectivity and overoptimization. As a matter of fact, the government of Singapore, whom we advised in the past, was prepared for such an eventuality with a precise plan since as early as 2010.

- Nassim Taleb

How the Pandemic Will End - Ed Young

• The first is that every nation manages to simultaneously bring the virus to heel, as with the original SARS in 2003. Given how widespread the coronavirus pandemic is, and how badly many countries are faring, the odds of worldwide synchronous control seem vanishingly small.'

• The second is that the virus does what past flu pandemics have done: It burns through the world and leaves behind enough immune survivors that it eventually struggles to find viable hosts. This “herd immunity” scenario would be quick, and thus tempting. But it would also come at a terrible cost: SARS-CoV-2 is more transmissible and fatal than the flu, and it would likely leave behind many millions of corpses and a trail of devastated health systems. The United Kingdom initially seemed to consider this herd-immunity strategy, before backtracking when models revealed the dire consequences. The U.S. now seems to be considering it too.'

• The third scenario is that the world plays a protracted game of whack-a-mole with the virus, stamping out outbreaks here and there until a vaccine can be produced. This is the best option, but also the longest and most complicated. It depends, for a start, on making a vaccine. If this were a flu pandemic, that would be easier. The world is experienced at making flu vaccines and does so every year. But there are no existing vaccines for coronaviruses—until now, these viruses seemed to cause diseases that were mild or rare—so researchers must start from scratch. The first steps have been impressively quick. Last Monday, a possible vaccine created by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health went into early clinical testing. That marks a 63-day gap between scientists sequencing the virus’s genes for the first time and doctors injecting a vaccine candidate into a person’s arm. “It’s overwhelmingly the world record,” Fauci said. But it’s also the fastest step among many subsequent slow ones. The initial trial will simply tell researchers if the vaccine seems safe, and if it can actually mobilize the immune system. Researchers will then need to check that it actually prevents infection from SARS-CoV-2. They’ll need to do animal tests and large-scale trials to ensure that the vaccine doesn’t cause severe side effects. They’ll need to work out what dose is required, how many shots people need, if the vaccine works in elderly people, and if it requires other chemicals to boost its effectiveness.
  
  - More Here

Our Humble Beginnings - Ancestor Of All Animals Identified In Australian Fossils

A team led by UC Riverside geologists has discovered the first ancestor on the family tree that contains most familiar animals today, including humans.

The tiny, wormlike creature, named Ikaria wariootia, is the earliest bilaterian, or organism with a front and back, two symmetrical sides, and openings at either end connected by a gut. The paper is published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The earliest multicellular organisms, such as sponges and algal mats, had variable shapes. Collectively known as the Ediacaran Biota, this group contains the oldest fossils of complex, multicellular organisms. However, most of these are not directly related to animals around today, including lily pad-shaped creatures known as Dickinsonia that lack basic features of most animals, such as a mouth or gut.

The development of bilateral symmetry was a critical step in the evolution of animal life, giving organisms the ability to move purposefully and a common, yet successful way to organize their bodies. A multitude of animals, from worms to insects to dinosaurs to humans, are organized around this same basic bilaterian body plan.

- More Here

Stop Harvesting Olives At Night -It Kills Millions Of Songbirds

From October to January, millions of birds from central and northern Europe winter in the Mediterranean basin. Suction olive harvesting at night kills these legally protected birds on a catastrophic scale as they rest in the bushes. This year, Spain’s Andalusian government recommended that the practice be stopped; currently, an estimated 2.6 million birds are vacuumed up annually in the country (see go.nature.com/2zkomts). Other big olive-producing countries should follow their lead.

Some 96,000 birds die in Portugal annually as a result of night-time olive harvesting (see, for example, go.nature.com/2zgy7ml). The Portuguese government has so far taken no action; France and Italy remain silent.

The trees are stripped at night because cool temperatures help to preserve the olives’ aromatic compounds. Local governments and local, national and international communities urgently need to assess the impact of the practice and take steps to end it.

- More Here

That Beautiful Snowy Day...

Behold, O monks, this is my last advice to you. All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation. Do your best.

- Last words of Buddha

Ed Young's 2018 Piece - The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?

Perhaps most important, the U.S. is prone to the same forgetfulness and shortsightedness that befall all nations, rich and poor—and the myopia has worsened considerably in recent years. Public-health programs are low on money; hospitals are stretched perilously thin; crucial funding is being slashed. And while we tend to think of science when we think of pandemic response, the worse the situation, the more the defense depends on political leadership.


When Ebola flared in 2014, the science-minded President Barack Obama calmly and quickly took the reins. The White House is now home to a president who is neither calm nor science-minded. We should not underestimate what that may mean if risk becomes reality.

[---]

Anthony fauci’s office walls are plastered with certificates, magazine articles, and other mementos from his 34-year career as niaid director, including photos of him with various presidents. In one picture, he stands in the Oval Office with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, pointing to a photo of HIV latching onto a white blood cell. In another, George W. Bush fastens the Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck. Fauci has counseled every president from Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama about the problem of epidemics, because each of them has needed that counsel. “This transcends administrations,” he tells me.

Reagan and the elder Bush had to face the emergence and proliferation of HIV. Clinton had to deal with the arrival of West Nile virus. Bush the younger had to contend with anthrax and sars. Barack Obama saw a flu pandemic in his third month in office, mers and Ebola at the start of his second term, and Zika at the dusk of his presidency. The responses of the presidents varied, Fauci told me: Clinton went on autopilot; the younger Bush made public health part of his legacy, funding an astonishingly successful anti-HIV program; Obama had the keenest intellectual interest in the subject.

And Donald Trump? “I haven’t had any interaction with him yet,” Fauci says. “But in fairness, there hasn’t been a situation.”

[---]

With patience and money—not even very much money compared with the vastness of rich-country spending—this kind of victory could be commonplace. An international partnership called the Global Health Security Agenda has already laid out a road map for nations to plug their vulnerabilities against infectious threats. Back in 2014, the U.S. committed $1 billion to the effort over five years. With it came a clear, if implicit, statement: Pandemic threats should be a global priority. Nous sommes ensemble.

Given that sense of commitment, and with the related funding in hand, the CDC made a large bet: It began helping 49 countries improve their epidemic preparedness, on the assumption that demonstrating success would assure a continued flow of money. But that bet now looks uncertain. Trump’s budget for 2019 would cut 67 percent from current annual spending.

If investments start receding, the CDC will have to wind down its activity in several countries, and its field officers will look for other jobs. Their local knowledge will disappear, and the relationships they have built will crumble. Trust is essential for controlling outbreaks; it is hard won, and not easily replaced. “In an outbreak, there’s so little time to learn things, make connections, learn how to not offend people,” Rimoin tells me. “We’re here in the Congo all the time. People know us.”

- More Here from Ed Young

Senator Cory Booker’s Best Idea - Farm System Reform Bill of 2019

Yes, Senator Booker has a bill to eliminate large factory farming in the US by 2040. This bill will not eliminate factory farming but a huge step to reduce suffering in those farms and a seed that could eventually eliminate factory farming. For the first time in my life, I am hopeful that it might happen in my life time. You can read the entire bill here.

Contrary to common belief, Senator Cory Booker’s best idea wasn’t dropping out of the 2020 presidential race. That was his second-best idea. His best idea was introducing the Farm System Reform Bill of 2019 to the U.S. Senate.

This legislation would curtail concentrated animal-feeding operations (CAFOs), so-called factory farms, in the U.S. Let’s hope it becomes law. Factory farms are an abomination, cruel to animals and a bad deal for humans, too. The sooner we abolish them, the better. Until then, we should take steps to reduce them.

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Globally, humans consume about 74 billion land animals per year, nearly all of which are raised and killed in factory farms after living miserable lives. That’s a staggering figure, about ten for every human being on the planet (though they are concentrated in rich countries — the average American consumes the equivalent of 31 animals per year). None of these animals would exist without factory farming, but they’d be better off not existing. We shouldn’t cause this much death and suffering unless we have some extremely compelling reason for doing so.

[---]

Booker’s bill puts a moratorium on the creation of new factory farms and the expansion of existing ones and makes “large” CAFOs, as specified by the Environmental Protection Agency, illegal by 2040. At that point, legally operating CAFOs would need to have, e.g., fewer than 1,000 cattle or cattle–calf pairs, 2,500 swine (weighing over 55 pounds), 82,000 laying hens, and 125,000 chickens other than laying hens.

It also sets aside $100 billion over ten years to help owners of factory farms repay debts, and for transition to “alternative agriculture activities, such as raising pasture-based livestock, growing specialty crops, or organic commodity production.”

I don’t rejoice in those expenses, or in the fact that smaller, but still large, CAFOs would still be allowed to operate. Passage of this bill would nevertheless move us away from the dreadful status quo and, hopefully, toward the eventual abolition of factory farming. It would reduce the risk of deadly diseases, including pandemics that could kill millions or more. By reducing animal cruelty on an unprecedented scale, it would also represent a moral advance that future generations could be proud of.

Happy Birthday Max!

Happy 14th my mentor, my love, my angel - my everything.

Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

- Middlemarch by George Eliot

After months, I worked up the courage to look at his pictures. His eternal naughtiness and powerful eyes bring nothing but smiles. I am blessed - I am the luckiest being who had the gift of spending years with him.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!

- Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman

This song beautifully sums up everything "Max" and how I feel about him - yes, smiling :-) !!



Then English translation goes something along these lines:

See, life is running,and I go behind it, (like, I follow it)New paths, all new turns,On an unknown street, I found a vagrant, wandering,little, kinda naked friend...

From where has he come,and to find what has he come?He didn't drink a single drop (of alcohol),and yet he is called PK(PeeKay in Hindi would mean, having drunk)

Sometimes it seems he's a Joker, sometimes he looks like a loafer,(and at times) some thief, complete novice, or even a professor of science...

The world was drunk under an intoxication,he had brought it back to consciousness...One that would make the whole world shake,that question he had asked...

He taught the skill of smiling,and taught how to drink sorrows...The one who gave a million memories...How do we forget him...

In history, no one such has come or ever will...He didn't even drink a dropbut he was called PK...

90 Days Later - A Gift Of "Black Start" From Max To Keep My Mind As A River

Understand: the greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized. Knowledge, experience, and theory have limitations: no amount of thinking in advance can prepare you for the chaos of life, for the infinite possibilities of the moment. The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz called this "friction": the difference between our plans and what actually happens. Since friction is inevitable, our minds have to be capable of keeping up with change and adapting to the unexpected. The better we can adapt our thoughts to the current circumstances, the more realistic our responses to them will be....

Think of the mind as a river: the faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change. The faster it flows, also the more it refreshes itself and the greater its energy. Obsessional thoughts, past experiences (whether traumas or successes), and preconceived notions are like boulders or mud in this river, settling and hardening there and damming it up. The river stops moving; stagnation sets in. You must wage constant war on this tendency in the mind.

-  The 33 Strategies of  War by Robert Greene

It's been 90 days since Max decided he had enough of me... since then there hasn't been a single morning without tears. Not a single one. When everyone bull-shited about grief, one of Max's vets told me a simple truth - it never gets better. I think she is the only one who understood that this pain has no cure and indirectly told me to learn to live with it.

Slowly I am realizing some of the hidden lessons Max taught are starting to come out to the surface. Ever since I read those powerful lines from Robert Greene, I decided to eliminate stagnations and boulders in my head - no matter what and tried to keep my mind flowing as a river. That decision helped me bring Neo home within just 4 days of Max passing away. That decision made me keep this blog alive. That decision is what is still helping to keep breathing, to be alive and to celebrate life.

But I am human. I have lost the love of my life. It is much easier to talk and write about keeping "the mind as a river" than actually doing it. There were hours and days which were impossible and there will be more impossible hours and days in the future.

What is Black Start?

A Black start is the reverse process of a blackout.
Electric power stations require electricity to start. Once they’re running, they can power themselves. But how do you get the initial power to them?
It’s like plugging an extension cord into itself and expecting it to work.
To solve this problem, power stations store a few small-ish generators. The smallest one can power the middle-sized one. This generator has enough power to then start the main power generators.
Yeah, it’s a cascade!

I am slowly realizing Max has given a gift of this Black Start generator inside of me. When everything inside me shuts down and the entire world is dark, this beautiful gift from him has the power to power me up to light the light inside of me and which in turn helps me keep going.

He was full of life and joy even as the cancer was eating him from inside. Even when he couldn't eat by himself, couldn't pee without a catheter and could even stand up to poop...  he had his tail wagging and his eyes were full of life. He had the most powerful Black Start generator inside him that made celebrate life until his last breath.

He didn't just give the gift but showed me how to use it.

I love you, Max. And you shouldn't have left me like this... I miss you.

We Are Missing Obama...

Today humanity faces an acute crisis not only due to the coronavirus, but also due to the lack of trust between humans. To defeat an epidemic, people need to trust scientific experts, citizens need to trust public authorities, and countries need to trust each other. Over the last few years, irresponsible politicians have deliberately undermined trust in science, in public authorities and in international cooperation. As a result, we are now facing this crisis bereft of global leaders that can inspire, organize and finance a coordinated global response.

During the 2014 Ebola epidemic, the U.S. served as that kind of leader. The U.S. fulfilled a similar role also during the 2008 financial crisis, when it rallied behind it enough countries to prevent global economic meltdown. But in recent years the U.S. has resigned its role as global leader. The current U.S. administration has cut support for international organizations like the World Health Organization, and has made it very clear to the world that the U.S. no longer has any real friends – it has only interests. When the coronavirus crisis erupted, the U.S. stayed on the sidelines, and has so far refrained from taking a leading role. Even if it eventually tries to assume leadership, trust in the current U.S. administration has been eroded to such an extent, that few countries would be willing to follow it. Would you follow a leader whose motto is “Me First”?

The void left by the U.S. has not been filled by anyone else. Just the opposite. Xenophobia, isolationism and distrust now characterize most of the international system. Without trust and global solidarity we will not be able to stop the coronavirus epidemic, and we are likely to see more such epidemics in future. But every crisis is also an opportunity. Hopefully the current epidemic will help humankind realize the acute danger posed by global disunity.

To take one prominent example, the epidemic could be a golden opportunity for the E.U. to regain the popular support it has lost in recent years. If the more fortunate members of the E.U. swiftly and generously send money, equipment and medical personnel to help their hardest-hit colleagues, this would prove the worth of the European ideal better than any number of speeches. If, on the other hand, each country is left to fend for itself, then the epidemic might sound the death-knell of the union.

In this moment of crisis, the crucial struggle takes place within humanity itself. If this epidemic results in greater disunity and mistrust among humans, it will be the virus’s greatest victory. When humans squabble – viruses double. In contrast, if the epidemic results in closer global cooperation, it will be a victory not only against the coronavirus, but against all future pathogens.

- Yuval Harari

Ethics of Precaution - Individual and Systemic Risk By Nassim Taleb

Precaution decisions do not scale. Collective safety may require excessive individual risk avoidance, even if it conflicts with an individual’s own interests and benefits. It may require an individual to worry about risks that are comparatively insignificant.
Assume a risk of a multiplicative viral epidemic, still in its early stages. The risk for an individual to catch the virus is very low, lower than other ailments. It is therefore "irrational" to panic (react immediately and as a priority). But if she or he does not panic and act in an ultra-conservative manner, they will contribute to the spread of the virus and it will become a severe source of systemic harm.

- Full paper here

Desires, Ego, Legacy, Arrogance & Illusion of Self All Vanishes...

An invisible virus can destroy so much of man-made subjective bullshit in a matter of hours. It is important to remember that this virus is not from an unknown family. Imagine if a virus evolves from an unknown family. If this doesn't humble the sapiens, I don't know what else could...

For once, get ready to let go of your ego and let tears follow while reading Carl Sagan's meditative lines. This planet is a gift. Every life is precious. Be humble. Enjoy and cherish the privilege of experiencing this time of this beautiful planet. And our self shelve-life is minuscule. Reflect on this. Again. Again.Again.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

China Bans Wildlife Trade and Consumption

China’s top legislature said it will immediately ban the trade and consumption of wild animals, in a fast-track decision it says will allow the country to win the battle against the coronavirus outbreak.

- More Here

These Chinese guys were the horrific proliferators of misery and decimating all wildlife across the globe for the last few decades.

They didn't enforce this ban out of morality nor did they learned lessons on ecology - they are doing it out of self-interest.

Adam Smith was right again!

The next lesson would be for "zen" Japanese and what they do to our oceans.

And goes without saying these factory farms in US...

What Will Sapiens Learn From This Coronavirus Pandemic?

My hunch says one and the only thing Sapiens will learn is inventing "reusable" toilet paper. Amen.

Narrative Collapse - For Once No One Has an "Opinion" or Bullshit Point of View

Biology, Ecology et al., are complex systems - all the bullshitter for once has nothing to say! 

They are just watching Coronavirus unfold. They never learned humility while living inside complexity but eternally confident of their simple answers (religion, politics, sports, acronyms and so on) for every damn thing under the universe. Lacking epistemological modesty will always come back to haunt us. 

Of course, this is only temporary, all bullshitters without a hint of irony will go back to their narrative fallacy and alternative histories within in few weeks. So it goes...

Venkatesh Rao has gem: 

Right now, the perception of agency at all levels is falling. Individuals, corporations, governments, heads of state, stock traders, the UN, everybody feels they’re losing the plot, but they don’t see anybody else finding it. Even ambitious grifters who want to profiteer off the narrative collapse struggle with what to do. Low-level grifters might hoard toilet paper, sell fake N95 masks, or peddle fake cures, but bigger, Bond-villain level moves are hard to script. The profiteering imagination fails at scale. Even disaster capitalism is hard to do in the immediate aftermath of true narrative collapse events. That’s how bad it gets. 

As far as we can tell, a virus has gotten inside the OODA loop of Homo sapiens, and seized the initiative, while we’re struggling to figure out what to even call it. It is spreading faster than our fastest truths, lies, and bullshit. A supersonic shock wave in the narrative marketplace. 

There is a sudden recalibration of how much agency humanity collectively possesses, and we’re not happy with the results.

Btw., its time to reread Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit. Here's his precise definition of Bullshit and why it has so prevalent these days:

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

[--] 

By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. 

[--] 

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs. The lack of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world.

Coronavirus Prevention - Stop Meat, Stillness & What Else?

To boost immunity take:

• Vitamin D3
• Astragalus
• Garlic with Allicin supplement or cut garlic and leave it for 10 mins or so and then cook
• MycoShield throat spray (with mushrooms)
• Elderberry
• Ever "cognizant" CDC will only tell you to wash your hands, don't touch your face and drink lots of water. These are good but remember government during WWII asked kids at school to get under the table during air raids and yes, same protocol during a nuclear holocaust too. 

These recommendations are from Dr. Andrew Weil on Kevin Rose Show

And of course, quit killing animals and learn to be still as a lifestyle change. Trust me, your personal gastrointestinal pleasures are destroying you. I used to say destroying animals and planet but karma disguised as a complex system has come home my fellow sapiens.

Also, check out the twitter hashtag #nomeatnocoronavirus

Demand For Coffee is Increasing Malaria Risk (Hint: Deforestation)

So here it goes, I am going to reduce coffee to one or 2 cups a day and maybe eliminate completely with months or years.

Full paper here:

Abstract
Deforestation can increase the transmission of malaria. Here, we build upon the existing link between malaria risk and deforestation by investigating how the global demand for commodities that increase deforestation can also increase malaria risk. We use a database of trade relationships to link the consumption of deforestation-implicated commodities in developed countries to estimates of country-level malaria risk in developing countries. We estimate that about 20% of the malaria risk in deforestation hotspots is driven by the international trade of deforestation-implicated export commodities, such as timber, wood products, tobacco, cocoa, coffee and cotton. By linking malaria risk to final consumers of commodities, we contribute information to support demand-side policy measures to complement existing malaria control interventions, with co-benefits for reducing deforestation and forest disturbance.

Coronavirus - Cause and Prevention

Cause:

The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialization, ‘Western civilization’ or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.

[---]

If there is anything unique about the human-animal it is that it has the ability to grow knowledge at an accelerating rate while being chronically incapable of learning from experience.

- John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans And Other Animals

Prevention:

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

- Blaise Pascal

Through the door opposite the one at which I was standing, a big, red, well-fed ox was led in. Two men were dragging it, and hardly had it entered when I saw a butcher raise a knife above its neck and stab it. The ox, as if all four legs had suddenly given way, fell heavily upon its belly, immediately turned over on one side, and began to work its legs and all its hind-quarters. Another butcher at once threw himself upon the ox from the side opposite to the twitching legs, caught its horns and twisted its head down to the ground, while another butcher cut its throat with a knife. From beneath the head there flowed a stream of blackish-red blood, which a besmeared boy caught in a tin basin. All the time this was going on the ox kept incessantly twitching its head as if trying to get up, and waved its four legs in the air. The basin was quickly filling, but the ox still lived, and, its stomach heaving heavily, both hind and fore legs worked so violently that the butchers held aloof. When one basin was full, the boy carried it away on his head to the albumen factory, while another boy placed a fresh basin, which also soon began to fill up. But still the ox heaved its body and worked its hind legs.

When the blood ceased to flow the butcher raised the animal's head and began to skin it. The ox continued to writhe. The head, stripped of its skin, showed red with white veins, and kept the position given it by the butcher; on both sides hung the skin. Still the animal did not cease to writhe. Than another butcher caught hold of one of the legs, broke it, and cut it off. In the remaining legs and the stomach the convulsions still continued. The other legs were cut off and thrown aside, together with those of other oxen belonging to the same owner. Then the carcass was dragged to the hoist and hung up, and the convulsions were over.

Thus I looked on from the door at the second, third, fourth ox. It was the same with each: the same cutting off of the head with bitten tongue, and the same convulsed members. The only difference was that the butcher did not always strike at once so as to cause the animal's fall. Sometimes he missed his aim, whereupon the ox leaped up, bellowed, and, covered with blood, tried to escape. But then his head was pulled under a bar, struck a second time, and he fell.

[---]

I only wish to say that for a good life a certain order of good actions is indispensable; that if a man's aspirations toward right living be serious they will inevitably follow one definite sequence; and that in this sequence the first virtue a man will strive after will be self-control, self-restraint. And in seeking for self-control a man will inevitably follow one definite sequence, and in this sequence, the first thing will be self-control in food –fasting. And in fasting, if he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal, food, because, to say nothing of the excitation of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling killing; and is called forth only by greediness and the desire for tasty food.

- The First Step, Leo Tolstoy

How To Prepare For Pandemic - Taleb

The concept of the precautionary principle popularized by Taleb is a gem. In simplistic terms - there are events (like this Coronavirus thing) where it is better to over-prepared (even if you might look like a fool in the short-term) than caught under-prepared (and being wiped out a.k.a death or worse).

Here's a great "note" on this by Taleb and team:

General Precautionary Principle
The general (non-naive) precautionary principle delineates conditions where actions must be taken to reduce the risk of ruin, and traditional cost-benefit analyses must not be used. These are ruin problems where, over time, exposure to tail events leads to a certain eventual extinction. While there is a very high probability for humanity surviving a single such event, over time, there is eventually zero probability of surviving repeated exposures to such events. While repeated risks can be taken by individuals with a limited life expectancy, ruin exposures must never be taken at the systemic and collective level. In technical terms, the precautionary principle applies when traditional statistical averages are invalid because risks are not ergodic.

[---]

Conclusion: Standard individual-scale policy approaches such as isolation, contact tracing, and monitoring are rapidly (computationally) overwhelmed in the face of mass infection, and thus also cannot be relied upon to stop a pandemic. Multiscale population approaches including drastically pruning contact networks using collective boundaries and social behavior change, and community self-monitoring, are essential.
Together, these observations lead to the necessity of a precautionary approach to current and potential pandemic outbreaks that must include constraining mobility patterns in the early stages of an outbreak, especially when little is known about the true parameters of the pathogen.
It will cost something to reduce mobility in the short term, but to fail to do so will eventually cost everything—if not from this event, then one in the future. Outbreaks are inevitable, but an appropriately precautionary response can mitigate systemic risk to the globe at large. But the policy- and decision-makers must act swiftly and avoid the fallacy that to have appropriate respect for uncertainty in the face of possible irreversible catastrophe amounts to "paranoia," or the converse a belief that nothing can be done.

Sheep Farmer Chooses Sanctuary Over Slaughter

Bat Coronaviruses in China (Published: 2 March 2019!)

Abstract: 

During the past two decades, three zoonotic coronaviruses have been identified as the cause of large-scale disease outbreaks–Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome (SADS). SARS and MERS emerged in 2003 and 2012, respectively, and caused a worldwide pandemic that claimed thousands of human lives, while SADS struck the swine industry in 2017. They have common characteristics, such as they are all highly pathogenic to humans or livestock, their agents originated from bats, and two of them originated in China. Thus, it is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China. Therefore, the investigation of bat coronaviruses becomes an urgent issue for the detection of early warning signs, which in turn minimizes the impact of such future outbreaks in China. The purpose of the review is to summarize the current knowledge on viral diversity, reservoir hosts, and the geographical distributions of bat coronaviruses in China, and eventually we aim to predict virus hotspots and their cross-species transmission potential.

- Full paper here - this was published in over a year ago and not much was done.

This addiction to human gastro-intestinal pleasures is causing so much pain but yet people are talking about "masks" and not quitting eating dead bodies of animals.

Sweet Karma - Labs Scramble To Find Right Animals For Coronavirus Studies

For centuries (esp., in the past few decades) of horrific torture of animals from cradle to grave will not go unanswered by nature. Nature has a way to balance misalignments. This may be the very visible beginnings of that.

“Viruses tend to coopt these molecules and use them as their receptors,” explained Kanta Subbarao, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, in Melbourne, Australia, who spent years doing coronavirus animal research.

Because those receptors evolved differently from one species to another, depending on the purpose they’re supposed to serve within the body, the viral proteins that can unlock a human cell can’t necessarily do the same in a macaque or mouse.

 - More Here

On the other note (but same self-induced cognitive dissonance), while this virus is "spreading",  people are still happily gorging on raw sushi and bloodstains ridden steaks. And that too without a hint of irony and clue what they are doing to themselves (and the entire civilization).

As they say... I am amazed by how we survived this long.

Inheriting Jealousy

For 13 plus years Max would never let me anyone kiss, touch or hug me without getting jealous and jumping all over. Even when his mobility was restricted, he would watch me from a distance kissing Fluffy or Garph... then I would come to him and kiss him more :-)

Now, for the past couple of weeks, something crazy is happening. Every day when I get up, I kiss his ashes and his picture. Neo has started getting jealous and jumps over me when I do this at any time of the day.

Years of this cosseted love has become part of it, call it the second law of thermodynamics.

I’ve found you can choose to let all the things that go wrong in life depress you. Or, you can accept that things will go wrong, try to laugh, and then look at what you can do. There’s a Japanese proverb that gets right to the point: We’re fools whether we dance or not -- so we might as well dance.”

- Peter Atkins

Who Are You, Chicken? Am I Seeing You?

In many ways chickens aren’t terribly different from us. They’re brave, not “chicken,” fierce in defense of their chicks. They’re gregarious and social, inventive. They have all sorts of individual personalities. Chickens were evolving long before we were. Their ancestor, the Gallus, ran though the forests of South-East Asia for 50 million years. They slept in trees, climbing the bark. They passed their wisdom on through the generations. When the glaciers divided them, new species formed. Civilizations of chickens rose and fell. Even today in their stunted, destroyed communities, they have 30 categories of conversation. They have close friendships, creative games, a culture of rituals. They teach their children. Hens sing to their eggs and the embryos twitter back through their shells.

(I think of our own early human iterations, our lost selves as nomadic tribes crossing fields and forests, now living in cages of concrete, rebar, and plastic, crumbling governance, touch-screens, in a vast warming pot.)

[---]

I wanted to write Bwwaauk so that she was very much a chicken, but I didn’t want her to represent all chickens. I wanted her to be entirely her own character, her unique self. I wrote and wrote, groping through this forest, but in the final analysis, at the core of Bwwaauk was a mystery. I didn’t know if I was getting at chicken-ness.

[---]

It’s a modernist question. How can I see a thing for what it really is with this human veil over my face? Maybe we can see only in terms of human narcissism.

Well, I am old-fashioned. I want to remove the veil. I want to pull off chains, emerge from Plato’s Cave, wince and blink in the light. I want to see the thing separate from myself and my use of it. I believe that in the effort lies true empathy—and we are so bad at empathy, however much we talk about it these days.

This is what drove me: If I can see this one thing, this humble hen, just for a moment, maybe I could see more, maybe I could see the web that connects us (and maybe I will try harder not to rip it to shreds?).

And if I can’t see the hen? Maybe I can at least see that I don’t see. Maybe I can sit and look at what I don’t understand and yet share so much with.

(Where are my loyalties? With humans or with the universe? With knowing or not-knowing?)

I wrote it all into the book, the knowing, the not-knowing.

- That beauty is from Deb Olin Unferth author of the new book Barn 8: A Novel

This is life. Precious

I quit eating animals for the same reason I didn't kill myself after Max.

Life is precious and rare. You live no matter what and see it through the end. Protect and honor it. You can learn so much from plants.


Bloom from Emily Johnstone on Vimeo.