Sky Scholarship

I take endless enjoyment from viewing the sky—either in the daytime, while watching patterns of the clouds, or at night, while watching patterns of the stars. Sometimes when I'm stargazing, I realize that I have not taken the time to learn the names and locations of many of the constellations. I feel quite unschooled in the celestial display above me. I know that the ancients were much more familiar with it than I am.

When I think about their sky scholarship as compared to mine, I recognize that our contemporary knowledge is fundamentally different from theirs. I know, for example, that those points of light are stars like our sun, off at distances that are hard for anyone to grasp. The science of astronomy has given me the knowledge to know certain facts that were beyond the ancients’ scholarship. They had no way of knowing what a star is, but their familiarity with the patterns and their movements far surpasses mine.

I sometimes fancy being able to transport myself back several thousand years, to sit beside an ancestor, as together we look up at the night sky, sharing our perspectives and individual scholarship on what we're viewing. I would love to tell my forebear what I know—as I struggle with attempting to describe what a star is and where it is and how it was created. Assuming we could surmount the language barrier—how might I get across the nuclear physics of star formation and their brilliance being due to all the energy being created by the fusion of hydrogen atoms? How could I even describe an atom?

But I would guess that my ancestral companion might equally struggle to help me understand the scholarship that they had built. But if we had the patience, I could benefit from their experiential understanding. I could delve deeply into the astronomical observatories that they painstakingly built—those marvels of engineering, like Stonehenge. I would learn about the knowledge accumulated over generations, as to the cyclic movement of the heavens—they did it by oral transmission, without writing anything down.

I would, with fascination, listen to how—despite their lack of astronomy—they had studied and become intimate with the comings and goings of the sun, the stars, the Moon, and the planets. They did not understand the true nature of these heavenly bodies, but they possessed a deep-seated scholarship of their behavior. And they saw meaning in those events... in the cycles. They could even forecast some heavenly happenings. They laid the foundation of their civilization and their spirituality on the predictable recurrence of those celestial sequences. My ancestor could show me a few things.

Bug Warfare Woes—Part 2

There is another way to deal with the invasions of microorganisms that promises a far more effective approach to dealing with various diseases caused by bugs. Rather than go to war with them, we could engage with them in positive ways that disarm them, and then live with them. This approach does not force them to become more virulent and fight back. This is a smarter, nonviolent approach.

We have already used this approach in developing vaccines. The process of creating many vaccines is to cause the harmful microorganism to evolve into a milder form in a laboratory, which we then inject into people. As a result, a person develops immunity to that milder bug (that we have literally bred) as well as the more harmful one, without getting sick. There is no attempt to kill off the microorganisms; instead, we disarm them (make them less virulent) and then live with them by building immunity. This is a way of duplicating how we naturally encounter many nonlethal kinds of bugs, which do not do us much harm at all—such as the rhinovirus that causes the common cold (which is a distant cousin to the SARS-2 virus that causes COVID-19).

This is how we can come to live with organisms that hardly make us sick—by transforming them into less deadly mutations. Many of the viruses and bacteria that invade us really have no intention of causing us serious harm. All they want to do is breed, multiply, and flourish—just as all life does. If they can do that without sickening us, that would be fine with them. In fact, our health can be important to their well-being… if we die, they must quickly find another host before they too expire. 

They are, however, in constant competition with other kinds of microorganisms (sort of a bug arms race), so they try to reproduce in huge quantities. That sometimes causes them to get out of hand, or evolve into extremely virulent bugs that cause diseases such as malaria, cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, smallpox, tuberculosis, and others.

We now have the science to characterize the genetic makeup of these microorganisms. This knowledge can help us to control their evolution and transform them into weaker, rather than stronger mutations. The fact that they mutate so fast, means that we can alter their genetic character in just a few weeks. When we do so, we need not go to war with heavy weapons that cause them to fight back. We can earn to live with them!

Furthermore the weapons we use to fight microorganisms (such as antibiotics) often cause lots of collateral damage when they also harm the trillions of beneficial bacteria that inhabit our bodies. Thus, after a dose of powerful antibiotics that has wiped out both the bad and the good bacteria, we must then use probiotics to recolonize our gut system with beneficial and necessary bacteria. 

We have the capability to make that transformation to a peaceful coexistence, if we forgo our natural instinct to go to war with every bug that we meet and learn to live harmoniously with them.

Stink bugs can do damage

 Click to enlarge

Bug Warfare Woes—Part 1

This last year has witnessed an extraordinary worldwide struggle with the COVID-19 disease. Not since the plagues of the 13^th century or the 1918 flu has such a huge impact of disease on human civilization occurred. COVID is an example of the dangers we humans flirt with, as we increasingly interact with and encroach upon the natural world. When we do so, we inevitably encounter diseases that leap from animals to humans. We can be thankful for how quickly modern science described the genetic basis of this latest virus and developed a vaccine in record time.

But did we set ourselves up for this threat, and have we handled it well? Yes, we have brought about a situation that virtually guaranteed the current pandemic, with our behavior that has made us vulnerable to animal diseases, and no, we have not dealt with it appropriately. A far better response could be imagined—if only one that fostered better cooperation between countries and regions. Yes, we can take credit for a “warp speed” vaccine, but there are much better ways we could have handled the epidemic.

Considering humanity's dealings with infectious diseases caused by various kinds of microorganisms, the struggle began long ago. But real warfare did not begin until humans concentrated in densely-populated clusters. All of the infectious bugs that cause human disease require high-density environments such as cities, for them to move easily from person to person. They require a host to invade, reproduce inside, and then invade another host, in order to perpetuate their species. 

Long before we realized that microorganisms were the cause of these diseases, we turned to religion or magic to protect us. The mysterious sources of these illnesses bewildered us. Then, a couple of hundred years ago we realized that microscopic critters were the cause... critters who invaded our bodies and made us sick. That understanding soon led to some ways in which we could effectively battle against them. So, in the same way that we respond to an invading human army, we went to war with bugs. Our mentality was to defeat them, in order to escape their diseases. Kill them and we could carry on securely.

Soon we began to understand the value of natural antibiotics to enlist in the war. And we later created vaccines—injecting us with harmless versions of an organism that would trigger our immune system to identify and defang the bugs. We began to use hygienic practices that either fended off or destroyed germs. These treatments were fantastically successful in curbing or fully eradicating several social diseases. 

But the process of going to war on microorganisms proved to be triumphant only in the short term. Just as humans have been caught up in arms races with each other throughout history—which has succeeded only in perpetuating endless and increasingly devastating wars—bugs have continued to engage with us in battle by quickly evolving to become increasingly formidable foes. As an example, the US developed the atom bomb in the 1940s and used it to terminate WWII (it was a “bomb to end all bombs”). But the USSR soon had the bomb too… so we both graduated to the hydrogen bomb. Now we stare each other down, with our finger on the trigger that could terminate humanity.

A result of this mentality is that, in our war on bugs, we have brought about the evolution of extremely hardy microorganisms that are now immune to most of our antibiotics. We've literally bred superbugs in this arms race. In a very similar manner, we have retaliated against agricultural pests by manufacturing pesticides that we've lavishly spread across the environment, with the long-term result that we've bred super insects that have grown a resistance to our insecticides. These problems have been brought about by our attitude of going to war, with little thought to where that approach will inevitably lead: a never-ending arms race.

Next time, a better way…

Microbiology Mastermind

An outdated view of the division of labor between our body and our brain is that all neural activity and consciousness reside in our brain, while action is the purview of the body (which is directed by the brain). This view has been modified in recent decades by the recognition that neural activity not only occurs in the spine and the brain (the central nervous system), but also throughout our gut. In fact some biologists today claim not only does our consciousness reside in central nervous system, but also in our gut biome. 

This view stems from the recent understanding of the crucial role that microorganisms play in our lives. An astounding fact is that the trillions of cells that constitute our body—all those that share our personal DNA—are outnumbered by various kinds of bacteria with their own DNA. For every one of our cells, there are 10 bacteria residing within, which are not “us.” We are inhabited by a legion of symbiotic organisms that are not really us... and yet they are. We could not survive without their work. It is likely the same for most plants and animals. We all are what is called “holobiants.” Our digestive system, for example, is literally controlled by gut bacteria—not us. Other examples are bacteria that help cows to digest grass, and similar species of bacteria that allow termites to digest the cellulose of trees.

Not only do these many kinds of bacteria perform a crucial function in the workings of our body, but since they evolve so rapidly, they help us adapt to rapid environmental changes. While our body's organs may take years or centuries to evolve, our resident microorganisms can evolve in days.

But the workings of our symbiotic selves—that is, the cooperative interaction between our cells and those jillions of microorganisms—is not confined just to bodily functions. Some biologists are realizing that our mental functions—yes, even our consciousness—is influenced by bacteria. Since the gut plays a role in our nervous system, gut bacteria can influence brain activity—literally affecting our emotions and cognitive processes. It has been demonstrated, for example, that gut bacteria affect the amygdala and thus the level of stress that we experience. Microorganisms alter our serotonin and oxytocin levels and their effect on emotions. In fact, 95% of our serotonin is created and stored in the gut!

Thus, each of us is legion. We are not a single being. We are a collective... a symbiont or holobiont. We must learn to take care of this legion, and find ways to deal with invasive, disease-causing bacteria, without damaging all our friendly, interior bacteria by taking doses of antibacterial medications. How do we get beyond our selfish perspective and take better care of the collective?

Kierkegaard’s Condemnation; Socrates’ Censuring

 Kierkegaard’s Condemnation; Socrates’ Censuring (3/3/21)

I have posted a few blogs on the nature of Socrates' stance on the beliefs of his fellow Athenians in ancient Greece, and how the Dane Soren Kierkegaard esteemed the 2400-year-old teachings of his mentor. While Socrates reproached his fellow citizens for their meaningless beliefs in the gods and their behaviors in public life, Kierkegaard condemned the Danish Lutheran Church for the meaningless practices of its so-called Christian practitioners in their lives.

They both declared that their societies had strayed from the true path of their religious and moral origins. In a previous posting I described how both Socrates and Kierkegaard perceived that people in their culture had become deluded by erroneous beliefs. Their denouncement of their respective cultures' spiritual practices stemmed from that delusion, they felt.

Socrates' challenge to Athenian practices was a general one that targeted the democratic process, claiming that it no longer informed citizens appropriately. Because Athenian religious and social issues were entwined, he was also challenging their religious conventions. They interpreted his accusations as attacking the foundations of society. The Athenian leaders put him on trial for violating a law of impiety and teaching dangerous ideas to youth and thus corrupting them. He was condemned to death, after having been found guilty.

In 19^th century Denmark, Kierkegaard—influenced by Socrates' charge that Athenians were conducting meaningless rituals—came to feel similarly about Danish religious practices. Kierkegaard was a devout Christian, and came to believe that, in order for one to follow the lessons of Jesus, it demanded risk and sacrifice. He believed that it was extremely difficult to take on and practice the true discipline of Christianity. He claimed that the Lutheran Church leaders in Copenhagen had become affluent and lazy. 

People were born into a Christian setting, and thus were automatically entitled to become a Christian, whereas Kierkegaard insisted one needs to choose to take on the hard work of Jesus—which demands simplicity and surrender. Although Kierkegaard's accusations made him very unpopular in proper Danish circles, his well-being, unlike his mentor Socrates, was never really threatened.

What I find inspirational about Socrates and Kierkegaard is their insight that it is not a complacent or facile task to faithfully follow an authentic spiritual path. Too often, the perpetuation of the institutions that subsequently came into being—after the originator of the religion died—became the focal point of the followers. When this happens, the real message—the hard work—becomes lost to shallow ritual. We need those prophetic voices that prick our conscience and remind us of how we have strayed. However, most of the time—like the prophets of old—we do not welcome that opinion.