Is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19?


tweets that link to the original Guardian article: top, latest


“As with almost all disasters, the Covid-19 disaster is the outcome of human choices.”
—Ilan Kelman (archive)

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four insatiable desires: acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power


“acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power” (!g)

Acquisitiveness – the wish to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods – is a motive which, … although it is the mainspring of the capitalist system, is by no means the most powerful of the motives that survive the conquest of hunger. Rivalry is a much stronger motive. … Vanity is a motive of immense potency. … Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates. … Alcibiades … Napoleon … Such men, however, are not quite pure examples, since they also derive immense satisfaction from vanity. The purest type is that of the eminence grise – the power behind the throne that never appears in public, and merely hugs itself with the secret thought: «How little these puppets know who is pulling the strings.» Baron Holstein, who controlled the foreign policy of the German Empire from 1890 to 1906, illustrates this type to perfection. He lived in a slum; he never appeared in society; he avoided meeting the Emperor, except on one single occasion when the Emperor’s importunity could not be resisted; he refused all invitations to Court functions, on the ground that he possessed no court dress. He had acquired secrets which enabled him to blackmail the Chancellor and many of the Kaiser’s intimates. He used the power of blackmail, not to acquire wealth, or fame, or any other obvious advantage, but merely to compel the adoption of the foreign policy he preferred.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1950/russell/lecture/
!gi Tenniel: “Dropping the Pilot” / March 1890 cartoon on the forced resignation of Otto von Bismarck (!?)

Jonathan Cook, a British-Israeli journalist and former Guardian employee who now works freelance, makes the point Bertrand Russell made 70 years ago: visible power is vulnerable, invisible power is not.

“As I pointed out in my previous post, the establishment’s power derives from its invisibility. Scrutiny is kryptonite to power.” —Jonathan Cook, here

“Understanding power and overcoming it through that understanding is the only path to liberation we can take as individuals, as societies, and as a species.” —Jonathan Cook, here

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dukkha explained

The short answer to why Buddhism is true is that “we are animals created by natural selection.” (!gb)

So says Robert Wright. And Evan Thompson responds with a philosopher’s take on truth here:
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Anansi tries to steal all the wisdom in the world

Anansi (!britannica)

“A myth is a story that encodes but does not necessarily explain a universal human experience.”
—Richard Holloway, former bishop (of Edinburgh) (!?)

wisdom from Anansi’s gourd is wherever it is seen:

“… things are not as they are seen, nor are they otherwise” / Lankavatara Sutra (!tw)

When the observer is the observed, there is only the observed, not the observer.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (!?) / source

The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary.
—David Bohm (!?)

other than in the abstract, nothing is unchanging, and nothing depends on nothing: nothing is an entity

only in the mind is anything or anyone an entity, and to imagine otherwise is dukkha (!?)

The great and beautiful secret of meditation practice is this: you can experience dukkha with equanimity.
—Zoketsu Norman Fischer (!?)

no one need do more than need be done to be and let be with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity (!?)

All of the above notwithstanding, hidden in plain sight is the obvious: “All we know is stories.” (!gi)

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Friesland (Frisia), Frisians, Frisian, and Friesians

Friesland (!m) is a northern Dutch province. The people are known as Frisians and the local language is known as Frisian. Descendants of Friesian dairy cattle are the now ubiquitous Holstein-Friesian (!i). And there are horses known as Friesians too. (!i)

tip: read the English while you listen to the Frisian

Frisian used to be spoken along the entire southern North Sea coast. (!?)
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