THE VIRUS
At this point, we have all formed some opinion about the Covid 19 virus. We have some idea about what it looks like and some idea about how it behaves. Regarding the behavior, most of us have this wrong, and regarding the look, almost all of us have this completely wrong.
A virus, this virus, is not alive. It is a piece of matter (we'll get further into that in a moment) that happens to be biological matter. It has no desires and no consciousness. It doesn't want to hurt you. It doesn't want to replicate. It doesn't want to commandeer the functioning of your cells. It doesn't want anything. It is not an 'it.' It is a tiny piece of DNA surrounded by some proteins. Neither the DNA nor the proteins have any intentions or any evil designs on you. They are matter, not life. They do not have a metabolic system to generate their own energy. They have no volition. If they leave one human body, it is because they are carried out on an exhalation. If they enter another human body it is because they are carried in by an inhalation. They do not care whether they wind up in another human body, or not. They are not alive, so, of course, they do not care if they live or die. The proteins that surround the DNA at the center of the virus are made of chains of amino acids. These amino acids each have a charge. They are either positive or negative. They are also averse to water (hydrophobic) or attracted to water (hydrophilic). But they are not attracted to water like we are attracted to water on a hot day. They are not thirsty. They don't crave water. They don't crave anything. It's just that the positive and negative charges of the amino acids line up with the positive and negative charges of the water molecule, so that they either bond, or are repulsed. That's it.
Viruses enter a cell, again, not because they want to, but because the particular shape of the virus and the particular pattern of positive and negative charges aligns perfectly with the particular pattern of positive and negative charges on the membrane of a cell, so that they bond, or that they are pulled into the interior of the cell. The same thing goes for their entrance through the nuclear membrane. The same thing goes for their bonding with a particular stretch of DNA in your genome. It's not that they want to land there, it's not that they want to make copies of themselves. It's that the pattern of positive and negative charges in the particular shape that the proteins are in, pulls them into that part of the genome that has a compatible shape and series of charges, and once that happens, the genome is stimulated to produce copies of the viral DNA and the codes for the proteins that surround them.
These copies are produced very quickly and suddenly the DNA of this cell, which is your cell, which you need for the biological functioning of your body, has been commandeered by the virus and is now producing copies of the virus rather than doing the work that you need it to accomplish for you. These copies of the virus multiply, leave that cell and travel through the nucleoplasm and then through the cytoplasm of that cell and then through the blood stream where they, again, not because of any motivation, but purely because of their shape and design of charges, are pulled into other cells. If this process goes unchecked, more and more cells are commandeered, taking more and more of your cells off line, at least off your line, and you start to get sick. Given the rapid speed at which these viruses can replicate, infiltrate other cells and replicate there, unless the body can summon an immune system response, or the body with the aid of modern medicine, can summon an immune response, you will get sicker and sicker as more and more cells are commandeered by the virus and stop serving you.
Now the diagram above shows a very rich, and solid and material and colorful representation of the virus. Depending on who created the representation, these colors will vary completely. Also available are representations of atoms and the inner workings of the cell in diagrams and videos, all made of brightly colored, solid shapes. And, in the case of the cell representations, at least, these pictures and videos can give you a good sense of the remarkable complexity and precision of the parts of a cell and how they move as they are doing their work. This, however, has absolutely nothing to do with what cells, viruses or organelles actually look like.
SIZE
The tininess of the virus is hard to imagine; impossible really. Twenty million viruses can fit on the head of a pin. As I said, each virus is made up of proteins and DNA, and these, in turn, are made up of molecules, which, in turn, are made up of atoms. Now when we see vibrant colors on these objects, those colors are made from the way the atoms and molecules, of which they are composed, refract light. Of course, within our bodies and especially within our cells, there is no light; therefore there is no color. Color needs two things. It needs light, which is non-existant in the great majority of the interior of our bodies, and it needs the wavelengths that are bounced back from this refraction to be interpreted by the enormously complex visual systems, including retinas and optic nerves, and visual cortexes of our own human bodies. And all of this, by the way, culminates in a map of firing neurons, in the visual cortex of our brains, each of which must then be interpreted into the colors and shapes as represented in the diagrams, such as the one above. But the biological, visual equipment to see such a thing as a virus, so dwarfs, in size, the virus itself, that no such visual image is possible, even with the aid of a light microscope. You can do much better with an electron microscope, but keep in mind, the electron microscope is telling you how the electron is being effected by an 'object.' It is actually telling you how the electron is being forced one way or the other, which could be accomplished by an 'object' or it could be accomplished by a 'force.'
Take, for instance, two powerful magnets, each charged in the same way and brought close to each other. You cannot bring them together. The space between the two, what is it? Is it matter or is it force? And if it's force and not matter, would it be strong enough to effect a stream of electrons? Of course it would. It's solid, in the sense that it is impervious to the penetration of our hand, but it is still not matter but a field of forces. Are those forces created by emanations from the 'matter' of the two magnets on either side, or are they created by two configurations of forces, charged in a certain way, that we call 'magnets'? In other words, are forces engendered by matter, or is matter, or the illusion of matter, engendered by forces?
WINDOW TINTING
A 25% tint on a car window means that seventy-five percent of the light is blocked and twenty-five percent passes through. If you put another 25% tint on top of the first one, then you are receiving twenty-five percent of twenty-five percent of the light. In other words, not a quarter of the light, but a quarter of a quarter. It would be very difficult, indeed, to see out that window. So if we go outside the body, because within the body we have the extra problem of the absence of light, but when we look at the colorful things around us, they are made of atoms and molecules. But to be able to see them at all, we are looking at conglomerations of, at least, many trillions of them. It is said that we need 20,000 atoms to detect something as wide as a human hair. But we don't see in one dimension. We see in three dimensions. To see the tiniest speck, that speck must have height, width and depth. In other words, 20,000 atoms in each direction which would be 20,000 to the third power or eight trillion atoms to form a speck that is just on the edge of visibility. Now let's lose the idea, that we have gotten from charts for years, that the atom is a ball. If it's an atom of gold, it would be a ball encased in gold. No such thing. There is no encasement. Every element is composed of electrons, neutrons and protons, and these are a tiny, tiny fraction of the space that encompasses the atom. If the neutrons and protons make up, in space, one millionth of the space of the atom, the electrons compose one thousandth of that millionth. And we have discovered that electrons, neutrons and protons are not particles, but wave/particles. Which means, according to modern science that they are 'somehow' in some unpredictable way, changing from waves to particles, and back again.
I look at this in a completely different way. What we are, that is all living beings, are ways of converting waves into particles. We are born, all creatures, to live a particular life, inheriting a particular genome, and, equally as important, a particular set of desires that are completely compatible with that genome (What is the point of having wings if you have no desire to fly? What is the point of having diggers if you have no desire to dig, or fins if you have no desire to swim, or human brains if you have no human curiosity?) and, also equally important, we inherit a species specific way of perceiving and understanding the world, in terms of who are your species mates and who are your enemies, who are your sexual partners and who are not, what is the food that looks attractive to you, and what looks repellent, what areas seem safe and what areas seem dangerous, etc.)
All of this is part of your inheritance, which comes as a package, and not piecemeal, as Darwinists would have it. How could you possibly function, how could you survive long enough to produce progeny, unless you were the inheritor of a genome, a set of desires and a means of perceiving the world around you, each element of which is perfectly compatible with the other?
We encounter these surrounding waves with electrons. That's how our sensory systems work. Each wave consists of an outer force which creates the spiral pattern of the wave and is pushing out and the inner part which creates the boundaries and the integrity of the wave, that keeps it from just dispersing randomly through the universe. This inner stream with an inward pull is, in the case of a light wave, not a photon, but the precursor to a photon. When encountered by an electron, the inner force is attracted to that electron, so that instead of moving forward with the rest of the wave at incredible speed, it bonds with the electron and accumulates until it is strong enough to pull the outer forces that are waving forward into an orbit around that central inner force. In the case of a light wave, this is called a photon. In the case of an electro-magnetic wave, this is called an electron. In the case of a proton wave, this is called a proton, etc. But without our observation, without each particular being creating the illusion of particular objects, which are really particular configurations of forces, the universe is a universe of waves.
Back to the window tints. If elements are completely opaque, don't forget you are not looking at one atom of them, you are looking at trillions, at least, of atoms. So if the force field of the atom refracts out a tiny percentage of the light, say .001%, which would not even be noticeable, then every individual atom would seem completely translucent; but when you multiply that .001% refraction trillions of times, you get something that is utterly opaque. A single atom is translucent. A clump of atoms large enough to be visible, depending on which atom it is, which means, really, depending on the make up and density of the inner and outer forces that make up the force field that we call an atom, may be transluscent or opaque.
PRE-PERCEPTIVE REALITY
We live in a world of waves, not particles. The waves are caused by the configuring forces of an inner force (yang) and an outer force (yin). These endless searches for the ultimate particle that holds the universe together are fruitless and lead us to more absurd conclusions the more we pursue them.
So we cannot perceive a single virus, because it is much too small for our relatively huge perceptive system to encounter. If anything we can feel it, by seeing how it effects an electron, or perhaps an x-ray, or other means. So we are not seeing it, but feeling it. The electron or the x-ray feel the contours of it and feels the pattern of forces that emanate from it. And that is what is going on in every cell in our body. Configurations of positive and negative forces, the inner force creating an inward pull and the outward force creating an outward pull which creates solidity and shape. And these 'force-shapes' are passing by each other. When the shapes and forces are compatible, two configurations merge. That merge may be strong or weak depending on just how well aligned the shapes and forces are. Also, one moving shape/force may cleave another shape/force. So that's what we have. Specific, translucent, unobservable, shape/forces passing each other and, depending on the compatibility of their patterns of forces and shapes, either combining, passing each other by, or one cleaving the other, and so on. It's not random. It is marvelously, transcendentally, brilliantly designed, so that not only do we have functioning organisms, but, depending on the particular sets of genomes/desires/perceptions inherent in each species, we get to live a multitude of completely different lives and get to experience, in this life, the satisfaction of our desires in a world, which each of us, from bacterium to humans, considers, in their own way, to be beautiful and to provide the possibility of enormous pleasure. Also, when desires are met, we are all, although only a very few of us are able to articulate it, capable of experiencing a glorious peace that comes from sensing the amazing order of this universe and how we fit perfectly into it.
Your comments are always welcome.
Matt Chait
