<The New Yorker recently had a good essay about hypochondriasis (hypochondriosis?), which states that historically, an anxious, gloomy temperament has been considered a sign of high intelligence.>
CB, careful, or you'll mislead unintelligent people into thinking they are smart because they are gloomy. It's the old correlation isn't causation business. The best test of intelligence isn't a gloominess test, it's an intelligence test.
On the other hand, if they mistakenly believe they are smart, at least they won't be gloomy. Or, maybe NewYorker.com has got gloomy customers and is trying to flatter them.
Meanwhile, back in February, Gwynne Dyer wrote his article about this new flu and some history on the Black Death. Now rattus rattus is back in the picture and the parallel is closer.
<It doesn't really matter how intelligent you are, or how rich you are, or how paranoid you are, or how clean your bathroom is. Those little buggies are out there and it's their job to find you and reproduce. They waft around on wings of irony and fate.>
A rich, smart and paranoid person could build an isolated life for themselves. So survival is no doubt possible without having to confront the bug in their body. But for most of us, we are in the biological mill, up close and personal.
It's germ warfare. It's the Trojan Horse. One tribe of humans with immunity to sars sends a carrier to another community. That kills of all those who aren't comparably genetically endowed to the carrier. The bug and genetically compatible hosts carry on and expand their domain.
It's a cunning trick on the part of the carriers and bugs. Maoris and some of your ancestors suffered greatly from Euro diseases. The human on human violence makes the news, but it's really the bugs which have done the most genocide. The cultural compression at the bottom of the human pyramid of those unable to cope which does the rest.
Evolution is not over. Nature is still red in tooth and claw. It just shows up more in breathing problems than tyrannosaurs chomping chimpoids like Jaffas [a sweet]. It also shows up in the digital divide and the cash flows.
Mqurice |
