Does Disease REALLY Spread by Contact?
INTRODUCTION: This note briefly explores the problematic concept of PATHOGEN, pointing to how the ‘thin skull rule’ that holds the identified PATHOGEN or CRIMINAL fully and solely responsible for destructive consequences of conflict, may be erroneously stripping the phenomena under investigation of its INEFFABLE content. For example if a hot summer has desiccated the vegetation and TRANSFORMED it into an ‘incendiary bomb waiting to go off’, the ‘thin skull rule’ will assign causal responsibility to the logger whose chain saw sparked a forest fire. Reflection shows that what is being obscured and replaced by LOCAL abstraction here is the REALITY of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION (i.e. the INEFFABLE).
We say that we have the power to ‘construct a house’ and/or ‘destroy a house’ (isn’t language great, it lets our imagination construct all kinds of ‘imagined realities’), but TRANSFORMATION is the REAL REALITY and WE ARE INCLUDED WITHIN IT. So, this habit we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have, of claiming to have powers of CONSTRUCTION and DESTRUCTION is just abstraction coming from the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar. We say that ‘we construct houses’ but if we look around, there are ‘bald patches’ in the forest where we have removed trees for lumber and there are large holes in the ground where we have taken sand and gravel for concrete foundations so “CONSTRUCTION” IS AN IMPOSSIBLE ABSTRACTION THAT IMPLIES “LOCAL” INSTANTIATION (this is easy to do with the abstracting power of language and grammar) WHERE WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON IS RELATIONAL “TRANSFORMATION” which is NONLOCAL and INEFFABLE and we are INCLUDED WITHIN IT. It is called ‘the Tao’ by some and the ‘Wave-field’ by others, terms that refer to the transforming relational continuum.
So, ‘CONSTRUCTION’ AND ‘DESTRUCTION’ ARE ABSTRACTIONS PIVOTING FROM THE ABSTRACT NOTION OF LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES, language based abstractions that are part of THE INTELLECTUAL REPRESENTATIONAL TECHNIQUE OF SUBSTITUTING NAME-INSTANTIATED LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES WITH NOTIONAL POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS (all of this being done by means of language and grammar), for the sensory experience of inclusion in NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION which is INEFFABLE-BECAUSE-NONLOCAL. In other words, ‘CONSTRUCTION’ and ‘DESTRUCTION’ are mutually supporting ‘PROPS’ that BACKHANDEDLY IMPLY THE “EXISTENCE” OF SOME NAMING-INSTANTIATED THING-IN-ITSELF. In this manner, the transforming relational continuum, which has no place for ‘things-in-themselves’, is set aside (mentally) so that this NEW WORLD of LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES can take over as the OPERATIVE REALITY. If we suspend our delivery of language-based representations with their reason-based grammatical constructions, our intuitive, sensory experience of inclusion in TRANSFORMATION (aka the Tao) based understanding will once again become the operative reality, and the binary concepts of CONSTRUCTION and DESTRUCTION will ‘recede into the darkness’ where ABSTRACTION lives as a kind of BRIGHTNESS of that which “IS” opposite to the DARKNESS of that which “IS NOT”.
CONSTRUCTION and DESTRUCTION are language-and-grammar born ABSTRACT BINARY REDUCTIONS OF RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION WHEREBY THE NONLOCAL (INEFFABLE) IS REDUCED TO THE LOCAL (EFFABLE). While ‘the EAST’ and modern physics employ the abstract binary concepts of CONSTRUCTION and DESTRUCTION merely as EFFABLE INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE REALITY (the Wave-field, the Tao) that lies INNATELY BEYOND the reach of LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have fallen into the habit of regarding the lOCAL and EFFABLE as REALITY, and this is a CRAZY-MAKER!
With this ‘background’ in hand, questions associated with COVID 19 can be explored for possible answers.
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The following Question is Explored. Could our common off-the-cuff answer prove to be prejudicial to our health?
DOES DISEASE “REALLY” SPREAD BY CONTACT?
The common WESTERN CULTURE SCHOOLED answer to this is YES, it can be spread by contact.
BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, REALLY?
We could follow this up with a probability-oriented question; i.e. ‘What is the probability of CONTRACTING AN ILLNESS THROUGH “CONTACT” WITH SOMEONE WHO HAS THE ILLNESS?
WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS INQUIRY?
The point (my intended point) is not to do with the literal content of the question and answer, but with the underlying, unstated, implicit assumptions used in formulating the question; i.e.
-1- An ‘illness’ is something that an ‘individual’ can ‘have’.
-2- An ‘illness’ can be ‘passed’ from one person to another by ‘close contact’.
-3- an ‘illness’ can ‘spread’ though a social collective through ‘close contact’.
DISCUSSION:
This concept of a ‘disease’ as a LOCAL PATHOLOGY caused by a PATHOGEN that can be passed from one person (a notional INDEPENDENTLY-EXISTING-THING-IN-ITSELF) to another person (a notional INDEPENDENTLY-EXISTING-THING-IN-ITSELF) is implicit in statements 1-3 above.
The PATHOGEN model we (WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS) commonly employ is a very idealized/abstract. If I pop a balloon, making a loud bang, and a nearby war vet with PTSD goes ballistic creating a lot of ‘collateral damage’, including another death, who is to blame? The war vet with PTSD is like a bomb primed for detonation that is not fussy about the ‘source’ of its detonation.
This stuff happens in real life, as we know and it ‘blurs’ what we refer to as ‘cause-and-effect’ aka the ‘producer-product’ dynamic’.
In this era of COVID 19 ‘infections’, our assumptions as to ‘causal relations’ seem in need of review.
For example, we are aware of physical situations that are complex such as COMBUSTION of materials that may become MORE EASILY COMBUSTED as they become more DESICCATED. Thus, within a cluster of vegetation such as trees, if a tree is very desiccated in a long hot summer exposure, as it burns, the heat from its burning can contribute to the desiccating of surrounding trees, so that they become more easily ignited. This is a nonlinear dynamic which doesn’t lend itself to the simple (producer-product) PATHOGEN-VICTIM model since the combustibility of the VICTIM varies in relation to its unique experience (its situation-shaped exposure to desiccating influence etc.).
The fact that the WESTERN sense of JUSTICE is based on the simplistic PRODUCER-PRODUCT dynamic puts us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS in the habit of thinking of relational transformation in the most simplistic (REDUCED to abstraction) manner. For example, the man who tosses his mostly extinguished cigarette butts into a forest that is most always soggy and wet (e.g. Pacific coast in the long rainy season) may one day be ‘blamed’ for ‘causing’ a forest fire for performing this very same act which is generally without any adverse consequences. While ‘his action’ does not change, what unfolds in association with his butt-tossing may change dramatically. I say ‘in association with’ because it is over-simplistic to say ‘as a result of his action’. We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS like the motto ‘KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!’ The ‘simplified’ PRODUCER-PRODUCT DYNAMIC as incorporated in the ‘PATHOGEN’ archetype spares us a lot of complex and unresolvable analysis, as in the earlier PTSD example. Here is our WESTERN CULRTURE STANDARD WAY OF REDUCING THE COMPLEXITY that commonly crops us in our rality, so as to simplify our administration of complex social relational unfoldings. Even though the producer-product dynamic is over-simplistic abstraction, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS use it all over the place because it is so much easier to use it than traying to make sense of real-life complexity.
https://www.e-lawresources.co.uk/Causation-in-criminal-liability.php
4. Thin skull rule (egg shell skull rule)
Under the thin skull rule, the defendant must take his victim as he finds him. This means if he has a particularly vulnerable victim he is fully liable for the consequences to them even if an ordinary person would not have suffered such severe consequences. For example if D commits a minor assault on V who has a heart condition and V suffers a heart attack and dies. D is liable for the death of V even though such an attack would result in no physical harm to some one without a heart condition.
We could also call this the desiccated forest rule since person who discards an almost but not quite fully extinguished cigarette butt which would do no harm under ‘normal conditions’ can trigger devastation where the forest, like the ‘thin skull’, ready to ‘self-destruct’ with the slightest of provocations. In this case, as well, WESTERN law holds the provocateur CAUSALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ‘SOURCING’ the disaster that unfolds.
What GETS LOST in the FIND/REWARD/PUNISH THE LOCAL SORCERER shuffle is the GREATER REALITY OF TRANSFORMATION
The concept of the PATHOGEN is another one of those simplifying LOCAL SOURCING concepts that CAPTURES DYNAMICS IN THE SIMPLISTIC ONE-SIDED TERMS OF A NAME-INSTANTIATED THING-IN-ITSELF WITH THE LOCAL POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT. As Nietzsche points out, this is a DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar and what it does is REDUCE NONLOCAL DYNAMICS TO (NOTIONAL) LOCAL DYNAMICS. For example, TRANSFORMATION is a NONLOCAL DYNAMIC.
The problem with TRANSFORMATION is that it is INEFFABLE so we prefer CONSTRUCTION and DESTRUCTION as these are both EFFABLE. For example, we speak in terms of the emergence of new land masses like Surtsey, and of ‘subduction zones’ wherein land masses are subducted into the hot centre of the earth for meltdown so that the melt can be spurted out of sea-floor volcanoes to form new continental or subcontinental masses like Surtsey.
If it weren’t for the psychological impact of NAMING (identifying newly forming surface masses and identifying subduction of existing surface masses, we would be understanding this as innately RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION.
The trouble with TRANSFORMATION is that it is NONLOCAL and has no beginning and ending in space-time. That’s characteristic of the Wave-field aka the Tao; i.e. ‘the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao’ – Lao Tzu.
So, because the actual REALITY OF OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE is INEFFABLE, we resort to REDUCTIONS such as the DOUBLE ERROR REDUCTIONS that ARE EFFABLE. For example, instead of speaking about DUNING with is a NONLOCAL RESONANCE phenomenon, we employ DOUBLE-ERROR-SPEAK, a reduction to notional “NAME-INSTANTIATED THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES WITH GRAMMAR INSTANTIATED POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS”.
An example of how we use the DOUBLE ERROR to reduce the ineffable to effable is where there we speak of a long evolving relational hostility which unfolds with Joe punching Bill. This is like the case of the dog getting onto the busy freeway and cars braking and swerving in a relational mélée that goes on for several minutes (miles) and at some point Joe smashes into Bill. Now we have a notional PERPETRATOR and VICTIM or PATHOGEN and VICTIM as if the event can be reduced to a LOCAL event. This is the same sort of reduction as where the vegetation dries up in the long hot summer and when some discards a cigarette butt with a spark lingering on it, we say that ‘the guy who discarded the butt’ is the CAUSE of the fire, without mentioning THE EGG-SHELL SKULL complication.
THAT’S THE WAY WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS HAVE COME TO THINK ABOUT “JUSTICE” AND “GUILT”.
The point is that REALITY IS INEFFABLE BECAUSE DYNAMICS ARE NONLOCAL (RELATIONAL), … AND WE WESTERN HUMANS CAME ALONG AND SAID, … HEY, WE NEED A LANGUAGE SO THAT WE CAN SHARE A REPRESENTATION OF OUR INEFFABLE EXPERIENCE ON INCLUSION THIS TRANSFORMING WAVE-FIELD, AND IF WE CAN ONLY CAPTURE A REDUCED REPRESENTATION OF REALITY, IT WILL STILL BE VERY VALUABLE IN ALLOWING US LANGUAGE BASED SHARING OF SUCH REDUCTIONS.
The point here is that “The Tao that can be told is not the TRUE Tao” so that we need to be honest about the fact that our language based DOUBLE ERROR REPRESENTATIONS of reality can only be EFFABLE INFERENCE of the reality that lies innately beyond EFFABLE capture..
THE EAST and modern physics (e.g. the Surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions) DOES use the DOUBLE ERROR REPRESENTATIONS ONLY AS INFERENCE, however, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are using the DOUBLE ERROR REPRESENTATIONS as if they were REALITY.
IN THIS CASE WE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE EGG-SHELL SKULL RULE that preserves the over-simplistic concept that the PATHOGEN is the SOURCE of the ACTION AND DEVELOPMENT.
Let’s not forget that the REAL REALITY is TRANSFORMATION and the only reason we are using the DOUBLE ERROR REDUCTION which is where the PATHOGEN model comes into play, is because TRANSFORMATION IS NONLOCAL AND INEFFABLE.
What about the THINK SKILL RULE as applied to the butt-tossing smoker and the desiccated forest blaze? What about the paper-bag popper and the war vet with PTSD?
What about the GREATER REALITY of the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM AKA THE WAVE-FIELD WHEREIN “FIGURE AND GROUND ARE ONE”? It is only when we overlay the DOUBLE ERROR REDUCTION that we start thinking in terms of PRODUCER-PRODUCT dynamics.
The EAST is only using the DOUBLE ERROR REDUCTION as INFERENCE of the ineffable, as ‘makes sense’, while the WEST is SUBSTITUTING THE DOUBLE ERROR REDUCTION as the OPERATIVE REALITY so that the ‘ineffable’ is no longer an aspect of reality … which makes NO sense; i.e. it is a CRAZY-MAKER!
The question; DOES DISEASE “REALLY” SPREAD BY CONTACT? … can be answered as follows; The PATHOGEN is not ‘real’ but is instead a DOUBLE ERROR based abstraction that is part of the language and grammar REDUCTION needed to render the ineffable effable. The reality is TRANSFORMATION so that when we see a spot of mold on a loaf of bread ‘spreading’ what we are really looking at is NOT LOCAL but is instead the NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION of the bread. Naming the LOCAL spot of mold ‘mold’ and using grammar to impute to it its own LOCAL power of SOURCING actions and development (‘the mold is spreading’) is the DOUBLE ERROR that is used to render ineffable NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION effable in the form of LOCAL DEVELOPMENT that may be either CONSTRUCTIVE or DESTRUCTIVE.
If the VISIBLY moldy part of the bread is LANGUAGE-NAMED ‘unhealthy’ and the VISIBLY non-moldy part is LANGUAGE-NAMED ‘healthy’, we are back in the binary basis of representation based on the abstraction of LOCAL as with FIRE BURNS. It is NOT possible to comprehend NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION at the same time as LOCAL SOURCING of DESTRUCTION (fire shrivels and consumes) or LOCAL SOURCING OF CONSTRUCTION (water swells and grows). While NONLOCAL is, like the Wave-field, ‘EVERYWHERE-AT-THE-SAME-TIME (essence of ‘ineffable’), the ‘LOCAL’ is HERE in space and NOW in time (essence of ‘effable’).
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DISCUSSION:
Since the Wave-field dynamic is TRANSFORMATION that is ‘everywhere-at-the-same-time’ aka ‘NONLOCAL’ and thus INEFFABLE, a reduction to EFFABLE is necessary to get some semblance of the INEFFABLE into language and grammar based REPRESENTATION to enable ‘sharing’. Language and grammar is a representational medium that is innately unable to capture and convey NONLOCALITY as is basic to TRANSFORMATION. TRANSFORMATION characterizes the Wave-field dynamic as in the ‘electromagnetic field of solar irradiance which stimulates development at the level of the all-inclusive Wave-field that includes the ”organic’ and ‘inorganic’ (designations which apply SUBSEQUENT to the reduction from the NONLOCAL Wave domain to the.LOCAL particulate domain). Note that the reduction from Waves to particles comes with requirement of imposing the ABSTRACT BINARY of SPACE and MATTER where the TWO are seen as MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, setting things up for ‘reality constructions’ featuring the EITHER/OR logic of the EXCLUDED medium. This would have us imagine that FIGURE and GROUND are TWO.
By contrast, the Wave-field dynamic wherein TRANSFORMATION is a NONLOCAL phenomenon accommodates FIGURE and GROUND as ONE. Our cognitive apparatus, in order to deal with this type of NON-BINARY representation, requires the use of BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium. For example, instead of visualizing the DUNE growing taller and longer and moving across the ‘DESERT’ floor, … our understanding is instead in terms of DUNING as a RESONANCE phenomenon (beyond-the-visual picturing of LOCAL forms in action and development, (as in acknowledging the dark side of the moon as associates with spherical topology). DUNING is a NONLOCAL, TRANSFORMATIONAL pheonomenon that cannot be represented in terms of LOCAL and EXPLICIT ITEMS of CONTENT (DUNES) notionally with their own powers of SOURCING actions and developments (i.e. “DUNING” cannot be represented with the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar; i.e. it is INEFFABLE).
Our sensory experience of inclusion in hot summer weather informs us as to how it is that the vegetation desiccates and transforms into a fire-bomb-waiting-to-go-off. We KNOW (INTUITIVELY) how the desiccating vegetation FEELS even as we wait for the seasonal brush fires to burst out in flames, as in the LOCAL aphorism FIRE BURNS. That is, we intuitively understand TRANSFORMATION and why it is INEFFABLE, because it is NONLOCAL (we are included in it).
Understanding TRANSFORMATION is something we can use to highgrade the deficiencies in our language and grammar representation where we have to resort to the ‘thin skull rule’ and the ‘dessicated forest rule’ wherein we reduce our language to representations based on simple LOCAL CAUSE because we are able to be explicit about it and share it (LOCAL CAUSE is ‘effable’) and TRANSFORMATION, being NONLOCAL and thus INEFFABLE, is not something we can explicitly share (we have to resort to INFERENCE as in the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ .
We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, meanwhile, use ‘the thin skull rule’ or ‘desiccated forest rule’ not just as INFERENCE of the ineffable that lies beyond reach of our language and grammar, as in EASTERN CULTURE usage, but for formulating our OPERATIVE REALITY. What these rules do is preserve the EGO-supported fallacy of LOCAL PRODUCER-PRODUCT SOURCING.
This is the basis of WESTERN CULTURE pseudo-REALITY constructions and it is a CRAZY-MAKER!
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