If I were a bacteria...

If I were a bacteria or a virus of the several hundreds of species that lurk inside the human body, I wonder what I would be thinking about my life and about my living environment. Now, most bacteria are primitive forms of life, they a merely a bunch of proteins centered around a DNA or a RNA sequence. They don’t have nervous systems nor do they have any kind of neuronal network. Hence, if they think, they must have a very primitive form of inferring about their life and their habitat. However, they resemble us in the way they struggle to survive and perpetuate their genetic heritage.
The human body is home to many kinds of bacteria. Most of these bacteria use resources from our own, but they provide back useful services. It is a fortunate symbiosis. Every once in a while, they seem to become too greedy, they multiply too much, they produce too much toxins or they consume too many resources. They become pathogens. Promptly, we wipe out some of them, with proper medication. Sometimes, we wipe out entire populations of bacteria. I am not sure whether bacteria know why this is happening to them. Maybe they tend to think it’s just an angry bacteria God, whom they let down. Or perhaps, they are aware of the negative impact they have on their habitat. Hence, most of the times, they behave nice towards their environment.
Now, if we are to zoom out the picture we can see a striking resemblance between the human specie and its natural host, Mother Earth. Of course, there are differences, but it is useful to underline the similarities.
Many will probably raise their eyebrow when faced with the hypothesis that Earth itself might have some sort of a conscience. But I ask: Why not? After all, what are we, humans? Just a bunch of particles held together into, its true, a very complex system. Have we been around for long, long enough to believe that we are one of the most advanced systems ever? Earth has been estimated to be around 4,6 billion years old. First organic life has shown up around 1 billion years ago. We, apes, have been around for approximately 2 million years. Now, if we think that we are intelligent entities, why on Earth, Earth itself will not posses some kind of intelligence? If you ask me, I’d say that its IQ could be “slightly” higher than ours. In a 4,6 billion to 2 million ratio. Or, to have the whole picture, planet Earth belongs to a species whose origins are far back in time, in the dawn of the Universe. This species had a lot of time to evolve.
Some might say that if this is true, then the non-stop circling around a star does not seem a very smart behavior from a supposedly very intelligent entity. Moreover, its inner systems seem far less complex than our beautiful human bodies. Well, I guess we can comprehend the behavior of our host, the same way bacteria understand why they are flushed with strange chemicals or, to put it simpler, why their host wakes up every morning at seven and goes to an office at nine. They probably don’t know anything about offices either. As far as complexity goes, even the comprehensible part of our planet, with is extremely fine tuned eco-systems, seems to me complicated enough to go well beyond our most advanced knowledge. Not to mention that we can only perceive a tiny part of the whole picture, the same way that bacteria perceive our bodies. And we don’t know anything about the planet’s “offices”. But if you ask me, I’d say that our planet, Earth, is quite young; he is child and he is in the elementary school now. The Sun is the young planets’ teacher. Solar radiation is a form of knowledge and when they will be educated enough, the young brats can start a serious office job. After, of course, they get “wasted” into cosmic dust, in their well deserved holyday.

This scenario is product of my fantasy, of course, but it is one possible scenario, born out of the limited knowledge I possess.

I would, however, be very careful with the amount of waste I produce. I just don’t want to produce a stomach ache to our generous, so far, host.

You are what you eat

The fortunate few (compared to the global population) that we enjoy an abundance of food we might discover that we have not been so lucky in the long run. All those fancy packed delicacies that we find on the supermarket shelves come with a wide range of chemical substances, that not so long ago were not even to be found freely in the nature. It is obvious that technology has evolved much faster that it took our metabolism to adapt to the new chemical challenges.
Most of these substances were supervised by specialized agencies and are supposed to be safe for consumption. However, I tend to believe that it is very difficult to properly asses the kind of imbalances that certain supposedly safe substances produce in the human body, especially in the long run. Moreover, intensive farming lead to the development of new and more lethal diseases on animals; these can fairly easy be passed to the humans, through consumption of contaminated meat.
All these shortcomings are in place because of the huge increase in food demand, and it will be impossible at this stage to feed an entire city without the aid of the adequate preservatives, anti-oxidants or sweeteners added to food. People started eating many substances discovered in the last decades. The body is bombed with these chemicals, and the long run effects are difficult to be predicted even by the most elaborate studies. Probably some of us will adapt and survive fairly well with the “new food”, while there will be a lot of casualties as well. It is part of the evolution process.
Now, related to evolution here is another issue. I think humankind should stop feeding with other living creatures. Not immediately, probably, but when this will be accomplished, we will probably move a step further on the evolution’s ladder. While there already are people that avoid eating food derived from animals, I do not suggest that we should all become vegetarians. Proteins are important building blocks of our bodies, and are vital for their proper functioning. The other alternative that I see and I think it lays within our grasp with the actual technologies even, is to try to grow animal-like tissue in an industrial manner. These will be the stakes of the future. Benefits of this kind of food are obvious: we will avoid ingesting other poisonous substances naturally found or artificially added in the animal meat. The new “meat” will be virus free and it can have the texture we most enjoy. Most important, the new food will be freed from any guilt of having to destroy another precious creation of nature (a life) to feed ourselves. I am sure that things will evolve in this direction and the actual farms will become industrial factories for growing artificial tissue that we can use for consumption. I just think we need to speed up the process a little bit. It will help our evolution as specie both physically and morally. The new food will probably not taste the way it does today, but tastes can be easily re-educated. I am sure our nephews will find it as disgusting to eat a living creature as we find it today to eat human meat.

Go West

Go or Weiqi is an ancient Chinese tactics game. Its rules are staggering simple. Black and White stones placed alternatively on the grid of a board by the two competing players with the aim of encircling the opponent and covering most territory. The game is very popular in East Asia, especially in Japan. Despite its simple rules, the complexity of the game is so great that a computerized player is still to be constructed, as opposed to chess, for instance. It has been argued that the strategies involved in the game describe the eastern strategic thinking as opposed to the western way of thinking. I dare to say that it even describes the different approaches to the fundamental values of life in the two societies. An ancient Chinese proverb related to Weiqi says “The real master is known by how much he can accomplish with little resources”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union an all its forged international structures, the Cold War ended. The Western world was breathing easier. It was obvious that the system they proposed was better and likely to succeed in the long run. The former communist countries turned quickly to the market economy and to the western social models. It is obvious that the enhanced competitiveness and productivity induced by the functioning of free markets was essential in creating the technological advance and the better social models of the Western world. Of course, the former communist countries were poised with other problems as well, aside from the economic ones. The ideology was wrong, people were lacking fundamental liberties, oppression and political terror was omnipresent. In all these dimensions, the western countries were far better off. At this point, we can arguably assert that democracy is the best social system we know, for promoting the values enlisted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However, in the aftermath of the Cold War, no one seemed to be much concerned with the question of whether the democracy is really a one-size hat that fits all. Even more, a pressure has been created, to point out that western world features the most advanced social system and those countries that do not adhere to the western values must be somehow lagging behind in their development. But free market comes also with the urge of consumption and with raising the living standards in what seems to be a sort of a race.
This type of consumerism behavior has been pressing hard on the secular Asian societies; China and India being the most significant new members of the consumerism club.
I do not argue that democracy is not good and market economy is not the most efficient way to redistribute resources. On the contrary, I totally agree with the fact that democracy is the best environment for human liberties to thrive, and certainly most of the market economy features are desirable for a proper development of society. However, maybe a critical approach would have been more appropriate after the communism collapse, and Western societies should have avoided creating any pressure on societies that have so different secular values.
I just don’t think that consumerism is what fits best the Chinese way of life and maybe India’s too, and I don’t think it will do them much good; not to mention the indirect effects on the wellbeing of the other parts of the world, western countries included.

Volatility in the finacial markets

There is no doubt that financial markets are the hallmark of the western economies or the core of the market economies. In fact, the phenomenon is global and even centralized economies like China feature financial markets. Started initially to facilitate stock trading, today they are extremely complex institutions and the range of financial instruments available for transactions is simply staggering. And, of course, new types of instruments appear every day.
It is obvious that they have an important role for the proper functioning of the market economy; they allow transferring financial resources from where they surplus to where they are needed; they facilitate diverting and dispersing risks associated with any economic endeavor; they allow hedging against risks collateral to the core activity of various companies. These are, of course, just a few of the financial markets beneficial purposes. There are a countless number of others, pure speculative purposes being an important share of them. Speculating on any financial market, with any financial instrument, is not bad in itself. Its part of the game and it helps creating opportunities where they would not otherwise be.
What is worrisome is that the whole system, with the complex interaction between geographically distinct financial markets, seems to have a life of its own. Normally, trends in financial markets should be correlated with the core economic activity, whether preceding or following it, but correlated in same way and to same extent. It is, however, obvious that an important part of the financial markets variation is induced by some other hard to specify and even harder to quantify, mainly psychological reasons. This points out to the fact the financial system is increasingly independent, with its own life and own moods. We should perhaps ponder very carefully if this increased autonomy is always beneficial or it can, sometimes, be damaging to an otherwise healthy economy.