AGAINST THE COVIDIAN DREAD

The Covidian period. The herd principle without the herd immunity. The slavish flight to safety from an addition to the long lists of ways to heaven. The desecration of humanity within the destitution of society.

My soul is sorely vexed. Why are we counting one pathway to death without comparative account of daily deaths? Were people brave, before the Covidian knell, to accept dying as a natural part of living or the media has a role to play in favouring the newer pathway to death against the more travelled paths? That dread sells and fear keeps humans in check is part of the social evolution of humans? What power they wield so arrogantly and carelessly in overshadowing the other pathways that are as deserving of attention though not as widespread, depending on the economic status of any one country.

The Covidian period reminds me that we practice dying daily when we sleep. We know when we are tired and off to bed but are we not able to tell exactly when we drift into another world or oblivion? There is a Yoruba adage that helps one to cope with the current fascination with avoidance of death. It says: “Eni ti Olodumare n so to ni oun gbe iku de” (“a person that God is protecting that claims to have death tied up”). I love the depth of the language because it shows us just how weak we are as humans and how the way that we survive is pre-programmed into us and how we can stretch the program by building strength through our vital health choices. It is a great convergence of science and religion. We fight many things based on our pre-programmed DNA structure and its attaching telomere. Our immunity remains our primordial shield as we share life with viruses and bacteria competing for space within a giant atmospheric ball, itself suspended in universal space with constellation of stars and planets revolving around its ancient fire and moons of lights.

The more I reflect on the pandemonic avoidance of death, the more I think of the self-destructive ways of humans in thinking we can avoid deaths that is pre-programmed into us and that we practice daily in sleep. In avoiding a pathway to death, we open ourselves to the other ways that we have blindsided; revealing our composite foolishness. The more the covidian avoidance, the more the wonder and amazement as to how one pathway overshadows the shadows of the other pathways.

So, how many people died in 2016, 4 years ago before we tumbled into the Covidian period? I could not shake off the thought and, voila! I found the statistics from the World Health Organisation as reflected below:

As I pondered on the graphics, I cried for my dearly beloved country, reminiscing Alan Paton’s book; which is so apt for reflecting the differences in what we grapple with in disease formation. Nigeria can be described as a low income country, despite its fast dissipating wealth of black gold.  As such, the statistics appear to show that our pathway to death has been laden with infectious/communicable / nutritional/natal diseases ever before the new strain of corona viruses showed up. So, when the rest of the “rich” world began to suffer what we have always suffered, we decided to play their rule book than realise that God/immunity has been how we have survived and how we will continue to survive. So, this new covidian pathway to death is in good company. The statistics of death by covidian knell within the “rich” world also shows socio-economic groupings that speak to our collective low income ways of life and our vitalities. We were crying more than the bereaved forgetting that our graves have long been filled by those things that now plague the rich world as presented below.

So, while the “God code” (DNA telosmere) may be good and elongated by the right choices of the rich countries with their healthcare systems, the earth effect/the deamon code, may be bad and thus reduce the strength with which to fight as courageously as brave hunters within a “Fagunwanian” forest of a thousand demons[1]. Indeed, the Yoruba folklore, which is very steep in geomancy[2], accepts the life force that not all humans will sleep slip into death at ripe old age.

The beautiful thing about data science is that it speaks clearly but it is like a whimper and unheard by most people because the noise of the media market place is deafening, aided by those who proclaim freedom for us. We call them “world leaders”. As I thought of this, the sprite reminded me of an ecclesiastical passage that those who proclaim freedom are themselves slave masters. And nothing could be more slavish than the dread of the covidian knell within an environment fertile with similar death knells but ignored.

What is even more dreadful is the dehumanization of society into virtual lives within a world where value creation is at infancy. The attempt to shred the fabric of society, to separate and displace families causes great depression and enforces the tartars of disobedience by those who would rather take their chances with nature/God. They say we are at war, yet, for us, we have always engaged battles as life is full of challenges that we must fight to overcome. Some years back, I attended a seminar talk by the late Clay Christensen, as part of my business leaders’ education with the HBS[3]. He spoke about the impact of new technological innovations and how little real value has been created for humanity. He traced the history of technological advancement and how the major ones (telephone, automobile, large ships, for example) have created jobs and brought people closer together while enriching society. It would appear that the incremental leaps on the old technological advancements are reversing the trend without creating any real human value other than improve efficiencies of the old. In improving efficiencies, the human value is being lost and society is being virtualised to self-destruct. So, should we virtualise without actualising that which is yet to thrive within our society. Should we play another’s rule book given that our experiences are different?

So, we social distance and virtually socialise. I wonder how many of us can do that and for how long will this identification with the rich and upper-middle income ideation last? Soon, I wonder whether that would be enough to keep “humanity safe” because the human isn’t just a mechanical animal, at least not for us where family and community is our social security. To imagine a life without community socials, without another human in nearness does not appear to be a life and cannot guarantee death being held at bay. We must remember that in the adamite eden, coupling was created for companionship. Then, through copulation came the multitudes of humans self-cloned to multiply as programmed by design. As I thought, the sprite spoke to me about being born within “orion’s belt”. What is that? It turns out to be a group of stars consisting of “three sisters” or “three kings” stars called Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, also known as string of pearls and sapphire. I wondered about the constellation of stars in groupings and felt that social distancing should not be used to desecrate society. The universe flows in rhythmic balance and humans are not created to be mechanical even if humans are methodical. So, any attempt to play the God code tends to result into something else. The clear fact is that there will not be dearth of death, which is why the earth deamon appears to program the rich and the God code appears to programs the poor, as the data of death pathways reveals.

So, what is society and what kind of society will take shape post covidian period?

The concept of “society” is somewhat shrouded in the moral, philosophical and evolutionary history of human. So, we were and found ourselves in large groupings out of couplings and copulations, each claiming dominance, primarily by physical strength and subsequently by intelligent manipulation of nature to aid physical strength and gather material strengths in spoils of nature. The physically weak had to seek protection from the strong until it gained intelligent strength exemplified in the Davidian catapult. Then, the physically weak and the physically strong had to seek protection of the wise one and the wise ones have continued to rule the earth. So, the origin of society from socio-evolutionary biology is that of subjugation by dread of death and protection by the wise ones. Luckily, wisdom is itself elastic and that elasticity has stretched till today, transforming from the Diluvian Ark of Noah to the Davidian Catapult.

In thinking through what society is and why humans are mechanical and social, the following quote by Robert Trivers resonates with me:

“Everybody has a social life. All living creatures reproduce and reproduction is a social event, since at its bare minimum it involves the genetic and material construction of one individual by another. In turn, differences between individuals in the number of their surviving offspring (natural selection) is the driving force behind organic evolution. Life is intrinsically social and it evolves through a process of natural selection which is itself social. For these reasons social evolution refers not only to the evolution of social relationships between individuals but also to deeper themes of biological organization stretching from gene to community”[4]

This takes us back to the God code being at play. Natural selection/immunity helps us to survive an infested earth, first populated by viruses, bacteria and microscopic animals before bigger animals, including the humanoid. Yes, the viruses got here first! From a layman’s perspective, viruses are like particulate dusts from the formation of the earth and have remained in animal species crossing one type to the other as society grew and humans continued to manipulate earth’s resources for intelligent power. So, we hear that the covidian strain y19 is an RNA viruse and the creation code has this to say:

“The discovery that a kind of RNA molecule called a ribozyme can catalyse both its own replication and the construction of proteins led to the hypothesis that earlier life-forms were based entirely on RNA. They could have formed an RNA world in which there were individuals but no species, as mutations and horizontal gene transfers would have meant that the offspring in each generation were quite likely to have different genomes from those that their parents started with. RNA would later have been replaced by DNA, which is more stable and therefore can build longer genomes, expanding the range of capabilities a single organism can have. Ribozymes remain as the main components of ribosomes, the "protein factories" of modern cells.”[5]

Science helps us to understand the world we live in and how we have survived. It also helps us to understand the ways of the God code, in hindsight, because currency fills us with dread and foresight makes us to fly to safety to avoid death that we practice daily and will come when it is time as programmed or by designate self.

So, since the earth is aboriginally infested and society was formed within it, should we then stop living in the forest of unseen pathways and shadows of death or should we embrace the life that we have been dealt and fight together for survival than virtually exist? I am not sure what the general answer is, but I am comfortable with the science and my faith in the God. It is for this reason that I think that we should swim against the tide of dread and survive, as we always have within this infested earth. To run and hide will not save us and may make us weaker to survive other viral dusts of the earth that may be accidentally released into our world either by our exploitation of nature or manipulation of earth’s resources for intelligent power.

As I walk daily into our offices, I see emptied buildings and potential piles of dusts. Soon, the economics of “Work from Home” will not make sense for business owners to keep these monuments of social interaction called “work-life”; and the covidian impact would not just be about safety but also about destruction of value and dehumanization of society into a world of virtual control and other transformed pathways to death. To survive, we must swim against the tide of dread and unlock value for intelligent power. Otherwise, we would have set in motion another age with the same classic death on different pathways and shadows of life. The sprite reminded me about “Ozymandias, King of Kings”[6], a beautiful poem about lost/abandoned cities and the vanities of life.

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

 We have to watch that our land does not become quickly antiquated. We are hunters within forests of a thousand demons. We are the beacons of light within an arrogant world. We are the hope of the earth because we are closest to nature and nature has helped us to survive; excepting where we have disrespected its tenets and turned to the earth deamon for knowledge and survival. Now is the time when we must show the world how to survive dread and come out stronger. We should not sink into the virtual world, destroy society and become antiquated. Life was not formed to be flaccid.

? Adetola Adegbayi, Lagos, Nigeria. 12th May 2020.

[1] D.O. Fagunwa. Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irumole (translated by Wole Soyinka as “Forest of a Thousand Demons).

[2] Divination by configuration of coded points.

[3] Harvard Business School AMP program

[4] Robert Trivers, 1985. Social Evolution. Menlo Park, California: Benjamin/Cummings, p. vii.

[5] Wikipedia. Summary of the History of the Earth.

[6] Poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley