“Never Retreat! Never Surrender!” — Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) in Galaxy Quest
1.
When I was young, I read a pile of science fiction. In fact, I still do. As a youngster, though, I watched Star Trek and was plastered to a small black and white television when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. I read Arthur C. Clark and Heinlein and Asimov and Ellison, and, assuming I knew way more than I did, imagined a day when humanity slipped the bonds of Gaia and traveled among the stars. It seemed like a certainty. In 1969, when I was eleven, it felt like it was going to happen during my lifetime. Now, though, I’m not so sure that it will happen at all.
It isn’t a foible of humanity (though there are plenty of those to go around) but rather the nature of reality and what we are that has convinced me of this. Allow me to explain. Some years back a fascinating experiment was conducted by John Cryan, PhD, Professor & Chair, Dept. of Anatomy & Neuroscience, University College Cork and Principal Investigator at the APC Microbiome Institute. The experiment is described very well in an episode of Radiolab called “Gut Feelings” (Link to Radiolab show). I’ll sum it up here, but the entire episode is absolutely worth a listen.
Cryan took two groups of mice and raised one on a sterile broth that was nutritionally fine, but that lacked any active bacteria. The other he raised on a diet rich in the bacteria Lactobacillus, a group of bacteria that are found in, among other things, active culture yogurt.
This is where it gets interesting. After a period of time the second group had developed a gut biome, a bacterial colony in their digestive system. The first group, of course, had none because they had never ingested any bacteria. Cryan tested each group. He used a water stress test. Basically, he dropped the mice, one by one, into a container of water from which there was no escape and timed how long it was before the animal just gave up trying and floated. Group one tested at about three minutes. Three minutes of frantically trying to escape and then each was done, just floating and waiting to either perish or be rescued.
Then he tested the second group, He dropped the first mouse and three minutes passed and the mouse showed no sign of quitting… then four minutes...then five. At six minutes he rescued the mouse, because there was no sign that it was going to give up. This happened with the second mouse, and the third, and then all of the mice in the second group. Yikes. Gut bacteria influences the behavior of mice to such a degree? Apparently.
So here’s my thinking. There are uncounted, and perhaps, uncountable variables in play where our biological interactions with nature are concerned. We have bacteria and viruses in our guts and on our bodies, all of the time. We breath them in with the dust and the pollen, consume them in our foods, absorb them through our skin. All sorts of bacteria and viruses, every day, and we only notice when they have an adverse effect, which they very rarely do. But this miasma, this network of microorganisms, is an interface that connects each of us directly to the planet.
Consider this: there are an estimated five nonillion bacteria on earth. A nonillion is a very big number. One trillion is expressed as a 1 followed by twelve zeros (1,000,000,000,000). A nonillion is expressed as a 1 followed by thirty zeros! (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Times five. Only about 1% of these bacteria are dangerous to humans in any way, and the rest? Who can say with any certainty what effect they have?
Bacteria are late to the party, though, because we also live among 10 nonillion viruses! We live within an actual sea of bacteria and viruses. They are everywhere, all around us, all of the time.
At least some of these bacteria and viruses, it seems to me, are necessary for human life in some way yet to be understood. Can humans live without and apart from them? I have my doubts. My suspicion is that we are tethered to this biosphere in ways we barely begin to understand and were we to launch ourselves into the stars we would quickly find we were like that ant who climbed onto a car and got driven across town—separated from the colony, alone, and doomed.
Of course, I could be wrong, but it feels, to me, like we are inextricably part of life on Earth. We enjoy pretending we are apart and basking in the delusion that we understand how it all works, but what we believe is often at odds with the real. Our own mitochondria, the little engine that powers every cell in each of our bodies, has a genome apart from our own. Mitochondrial DNA is more akin to the DNA of...bacteria. Many very smart people disagree, but my gut tells me we won’t be colonizing Mars. I think we will always be tourists when away from Earth. Just Scuba divers exploring places where we can never actually dwell.
2.
“I read the news today, oh boy…” --Paul McCartney and John Lennon
I’m putting the universe on notice: Unless I’m diving, attending a costumed event, crash my immune system, am seriously in need of oxygen, sanding drywall, spraying paint, or robbing a bank...I will not be wearing a mask again. It isn’t going to happen.
During the last government induced panic, that blizzard of lies, I wore a mask to be polite. Why make neurotic people more nervous still? I figured. Long after it was clear the mask was entirely symbolic, I’d keep the dirty thing in my pocket with the lint and loose change and put it on in public settings in deference to the delusions of others.
I’m not going to do it again. Pretty much everyone I know contracted the man-made flu because there is simply no way a silly paper mask, or a bandanna, or even the highly coveted N95 can obstruct a virus. I know this. You know this. Anthony Fauci knows this. We did the experiment in real time, with a subject group damn near 100% of the population. Masks were as effective as rubber clown noses or the bird-like plague masks of the 17th century. We should have worn them, instead. It would have been at least as effective and visually way more interesting. Imagine a White House Press Conference in which everyone is wearing a red rubber nose, not because it protects them, but because it protects a narrative.
Which brings us to today.
In many ways the political parties are like baseball teams. No one can be certain exactly which variables caused the last L or W so magical thinking abounds. Many baseball players eat precisely the same meal before each game, avoid walking on the foul lines when stepping onto the field, and have private rituals they perform. Amby McConnell (Red Sox 1908-1910, White Sox 1910-1911) spent his career off the field always looking down at the sidewalk because he believed that every hair pin he found would cause a base hit. During his career he averaged .264. I don’t know how many pins he found.
Political parties think like Amby McConnell. We won last time, and we can’t be certain why, so we’d best duplicate every possible condition for the next contest. If the country was panicked by a virus last election and we won? We’d better be certain they are panicked this time, too.
I’m not playing. It is not rude to be rational. Refusing to validate the irrational behavior of others is not bad manners. If all of my neighbors were to suddenly refuse to sleep anywhere but in their cars because they believed their homes haunted, it would not be rude to sleep in the house and in my bed. There is obligation to validate anyone else. In fact, it often brings out the very worst among people. I guarantee you there were many people in Salem and Europe who thought, “This fascination with witches is bullshit.” but who went along because that is what was expected of them. I will not fall into line again. I fell for it once and allowed the desire to get along to cause me to behave irrationally and against my own judgment in the name of manners, but I will not do it again.
They’ll just have to hold their election without a panic, or stage their panic without me. Either works. I may choose to wear a red rubber nose, though, if the powers-that-be choose to go that way. I won’t panic when I’m told to, but funny is funny.
3.
I’ve turned on paid subscriptions because a few people have tried to donate to this blog and were unable to. I don’t intend this to stop anyone from just reading what I post for free, though. The intent is to allow people to contribute as they see fit.
If this becomes an issue—if you don’t get the emails or are unable to access the site—just let me know and I’ll turn subscriptions off.
Thanks everyone!
Peace.
Mark, I enjoy reading your commentaries. This one affected me personally, regarding N-95 masks. These masks do provide protection from many hazards, as I can attest from my career working in hazardous conditions. These masks must fit correctly. In fact, they are actually classified as respirators and the wearer must be fit-tested to ascertain that they are protecting the wearer from the particles that the respirator is certified to filter out. Of course, most of the general public does not understand the nuances of respirators or "masks", how to properly don them, what they can and cannot filter, etc. The immune-compromised population may get instructed to wear a "surgical" mask by their medical team to protect themselves from germs, but we all now know that only a respirator (e.g. N-95 or N-99) comes close to protecting them from a life-threatening inhalation. N-95/99 respirators vary by the environment that they are designed for; e.g. particulates, medical, hazardous chemicals, etc. I know. I worked for 30 years in hazardous chemical exposures and I now am severely immune compromised. Masks and respirators are forever in my life.