As we know, there are many people who believe in the existence of viruses with all the certainty and passion they can muster.
After
exhaustive research over a period of 14 years, in the lab, I’ve
isolated, purified, and identified 16,768 distinct types of these virus
lovers.
I’m
now negotiating with Pfizer to develop a vaccine against each
type. (Pfizer doesn’t care what a vaccine does; it only cares about
marketing and money.)
From my vault, here is a profile of Type 6,659. See if he seems familiar.
Of
course, he thinks of himself as “science-minded.” He likes models. He
LIKES the notion of vast interconnected systems. Studying these systems
feels stabilizing. Also feels like a warm bath with soft music in the
background.
Closed systems---with the emphasis on CLOSED---appeal to him. Like crosswords puzzles.
Games are good. Chess, for example. If only the world were like chess. All the pieces on one board. Rules for their movements.
You
can’t let someone move a piece off the board. That would be absurd. And
you can’t let a person bring a piece on to the board from God knows
where. We must have order.
Tight control.
Look
at giant armies on parade, in the US, in the old Soviet Union, in
China. Especially China. Perfect lines and rows. They’re heartening to
him.
Look at a flower. It, too, is perfect. As you look deeper, into its structure, every tiny piece has its place.
What about its VITALITY?
Hmm. The microscope doesn’t show that. So this virus lover can discount it.
What about the vitality of a person? Must be a myth. Analysis only reveals interlocking structures. As in a machine.
Look
at two people. The first one is sitting in a chair. His skin seems to
be a shade of gray. He’s obviously fatigued. Not much going on. The
second person is running through a field at top speed. But not just
running. His stride seems to be elastic. He’s…what? Free? Alive?
This
virus lover says: Nonsense. The only differences between these two
people would be found and explained, inside their bodies, in the
operating levels of systems.
One
machine runs well; the other doesn’t. What else could be going
on? Nothing. The first person needs to go to the shop for repair. That’s
all.
Because closed structures are the totality of reality.
Of course they are.
Sure.
You bet.
No doubt.
Uh-huh.
And when you take away a closed system from this virus lover, this addict who must have it, he shudders.
When
he was a child, he played with a train set his parents bought him for
Christmas. The train ran through a little village. It was breathtaking.
The world must be made into the train set.
The
idea that systems and structures rest on something else---something
ASTONISHING that can’t be plugged into equations---is alien to him. It
doesn’t register.
Maybe
someday, when he’s 90, and he’s sitting on the back porch dozing away,
it’ll suddenly come to him. But for now, he has to have Closed Order.
Nothing can be disposed of. Certainly not the existence of the virus.
If
you could send a vast parade by him; the works of thousands of artists
who painted, for hundreds of years, beyond any system; he wouldn’t have a
clue what he was looking at.
If you told him, LIFE SUPERSEDES THE GERM, he wouldn’t know what you were talking about.
When he enters his local Whole Foods, he looks for the hand sanitizer. He needs to have that goo on his hands.
In
person, he seems friendly enough. But, for instance, if he owns a
business, and you could walk in and stand in the corner and watch, you’d
see he treats his employees like lowly peasants.
He’s
in a rage. He really doesn’t know why. But he’s madly pursuing some
sort of fictional perfection which should be met but somehow can never
be met. Because it’s all in his mind.
He’s huffing and puffing because he must maintain his own mind as if it’s columns and rows of figures.
Take one number away and the whole structure could collapse.
It
turns out he’s wrong. Dead wrong. His mind isn’t rows of figures, and
nothing collapses when he stops obsessing, except obsession itself.
But he wouldn’t know that.
And he would say he’s defending the existence of the virus as just a matter of science. Good science. The best science.
Rounding
out this portrait of what I would call a high-IQ-idiot, let’s say he
owns a Rolex. He wears it every day. Prized possession. He looks at it
the way an adoring child looks at his father.
As
a lark, a joke, a little test, you tell him you want to remove a tiny
piece of the internal works of this watch. Just one tiny piece.
You’d better step back.
If he’s packing heat, he’ll draw on you.
If he has the wherewithal and the clout, he’ll call in a drone strike.
This is a man who, standing in front of the mirror in the morning, takes ten minutes to trim his moustache.
And that’s just a segment of hair on his face.
You’re talking about his ROLEX.
Virus, virus, virus. His world MUST contain the virus.
To hold off the nameless Doom.
Let him go, walk away.
~~~
(The link to this article posted on my blog is here.)
(Follow me on Gab at @jonrappoport)
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