It’s February 13 (or was, when I started this), and I’m Not Dead Yet. Though with COVID-19, who knows how long that’s going to be.
Seriously, it’s not that serious. I just can’t resist shitty jokes.
And since I haven’t written a post in a couple of days, why not start with the inspiring story of the global response to COVID019?
Here’s what I think it means.
- The world is waking up.
- What’s waking it up
- The right kind of crisis
- Signs of the global mind at work
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The world is waking up
Years ago, I read a few books by and/or inspired by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest.
His idea was that the biosphere—the layer of life that covers an otherwise empty, barren rock—is turning into a noosphere.
The word noosphere, from the Greek noos, for mind, is the idea of evolving global consciousness.
It’s all headed toward an “Omega Point” (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving).
We can see it happening. The collection of connected minds on the planet is the noosphere. New minds are joining, and the connections are getting faster and stronger, and amazing things are starting to happen.
Most of the minds in the noosphere are human, but some humans are gateways between the core collection of human minds and minds connected to their beloved cats, dogs, and other non-human animal minds.
Teilhard de Chardin lived before the internet, but he saw the noosphere growing as telephone and radio networks. Before that, print and writing vastly increated the connectivity-reach of individual human minds.
I’ve gotten to see the global mind start to wake up and direct itself to some of the serious problems that face us.
What’s waking it up
It’s the coronavirus,
Actually, it’s not the coronavirus. There are, and have been lots of them. SARS was one of the more famous coronaviruses, but it’s a big family with lots of cousins and uncles. The one that everyone is talking about is COVID-19, named for the year in which it was discovered 2019.
Here’s a rendering (not actual size):
This has been a wake-up call for the noosphere.
The right kind of crisis
Climate Change or Global Warming or AGW or whatever you want to call it may be a threat. It may even be a crisis.
But it’s the wrong kind of crisis.
COVID-19 is the right kind of crisis to help wake up the noosphere.
It’s not the first such crisis we’re going to see, and we’re going to need to get good at it.
Someone dies, and you can test their blood for the COVID-19 antibody. And if it’s there, you can pretty much know what killed them.
Where’s the test for determining that someone died due to climate change?
Hint: there isn’t one.
Hint: there can’t be one.
The result: reasonable people will waste lots of time debating the issue.
Reasonable people can debate hypotheses about the long-term consequences of our present emissions trajectory. Reasonable people can argue about what “our current trajectory” means. Reasonable people can talk about the best combination of adaptation, mitigation, and prevention.
COVID-19 is a whole other ball game.
COVID-19 is not climate change.
And it’s not even Ebola.
Remember Ebola?
Remember the Ebola scare of a couple of years ago?
Overall, eleven people were treated for Ebola in the United States during the 2014-2016 epidemic
That was over years. With this one, in a couple of months, we’ve already got fifteen.
Yeah, there were some cases outside Africa. One here, two there. But Ebola never really left its breeding grounds.
Here’s the map. Outside of Africa, the dots represent single infections, and this is five years after the initial outbreak.
Meanwhile, here’s what COVID-19 looks like,
There are few parts of the world as thoroughly connected to the rest of humanity as China.
Ebola was relatively slow-moving. There was time for debate and delay.
And of course for hysteria.
COVID-19 is different, and the global mind is saying, “We don’t have time to fuck around. We need to get on this!”
And get on it, we have.
Signs of the global mind at work
I’m fresh back from a visit to r/china_flu, a moderated subreddit that’s collecting and organizing the knowledge being generated all over the world r/china_flu is not the only hub for this kind of knowledge. There’s r/COVID19 more heavily moderated subreddit that aggregates and organizes more technical knowledge about COVID19—but is still open to discussion and analysis by less technical folks.
The Daily Discussion Post this one from February 13, is a starting point.
Here’s what today’s post looks like:
The WHO pages contain up to date and global information. Please refer to our Wiki for additiona information and a FAQ.Well sourced map and data (John Hopkins)Please click here for our official websiteJoin the user-moderated Discord server (we are not responsible for this)Our official YouTube channel will soon have interviews with multiple professionals and scientists subscribe to it to be notified when they are uploaded!Join r/COVID19 for scientific, sourced discussion. Rules are enforced more strict there than here going forward.
That’s a gateway to a world of knowledge.
Click on some of the links, and you’ll see what people, all over the world, are doing to figure out what’s going on. People with useful skills can find what other like-minded folks are doing, and how to connect with them. People with the most vital, critical skills have dropped what they are doing and jumped in.
Here’s another encouraging sign, from here
SUCCESS UPDATE! Petition to take paywalls down during outbreak pushes publishers to release thousands more open-access articles for scientists
So, OK, not everything is perfect.
But cheer up. You’re not dead yet.
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