After the failure of the Royal Commission on Covid-19, we are all wondering ‘where to from here?’ We are not alone. The entire biotech industry is now planning future expansion bolstered by the ‘findings’ (???) of pandemic inquiries in multiple countries which have failed to criticise biotech experimentation.
Bucking the trend of ‘all systems go’, Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, known for her research into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, is raising critical questions about control of gain of function research. Chan points out that the US still has no national policy to control gain of function research which involves the creation of new pathogens that can escape and kill millions of people. This is not just happening in the USA, multiple countries are continuing to conduct gain of function experiments which create deadly novel viruses.
There are military objectives in play in the USA and in countries like Russia, Ukraine, UK, Iran, China and many others on all the continents. These are euphemistically described as ‘offensive/defensive dual purpose initiatives’ supposedly designed to understand how pathogens evolve and how they might be stopped in the event of a bio war. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but the Covid pandemic should have taught us that secure containment of pathogens is a myth. Gain of function research on transmissible pathogens like influenza, coronaviruses HIV, bird flu, smallpox and ebola, does not reduce risk, it increases it. This is because the process of gain of function research involves making a virus more deadly and more contagious. In some cases this involves transforming a disease limited to one animal species into a transmissible human disease.
In fact, few countries have any requirement to release information about what their labs are actually doing and which pathogens are involved. Nor are there requirements to report lab leaks or infections acquired by staff as a result of accidents. Chan reports that in the USA for example anyone can still easily source a sample of a deadly virus and start research in a low-safety lab without violating any US law. With the advent of AI, such research is being multiplied and speeded up. If there is any debate (which is debatable), it is more about who should be allowed to do this kind of research, rather than how to stop it starting another global pandemic. This is more reminiscent of a group of hyenas fighting over a carcass than the entirely misleading PR image of responsible scientists trying to save the world.
You can’t help but conclude that there has been a massive failure of individual and collective intelligence. Certainly there are leading rogue players and extreme risk takers, but the whole gene editing frenzy involves hundreds of thousands of editors around the world experimenting and altering the foundation of life. This reeks of collective madness. How did this kind of psychology overtake the scientific community? The answer may lie in the process of modern education. The modern era started with the invention and widespread use of scripts, writing, mathematical symbols and calculations. Together these allowed the structure of logic to engage with experience in order to formalise natural laws and judicial truths—the foundation of an orderly society. In contrast, the emergence of a bioscience which risks the health of the entire world points to the imminent collapse of civilisation and a declaration of global anarchy.
How has this happened?
Aside from commercial greed and unbridled militarism, educational trends bear a proportion of the blame. Schools have been bypassing reading, writing and numeric skills, deputising them to tablets increasingly driven by AI. Thereby ceding control to mindless technology, without any cast iron certainty of logic and truth or relationship to evidence—machines able to run wild at the press of a button.
As we have previously reported in our article The Unthinking Faith in Biotechnology and A.I., the sad reality is that a high proportion of students, even at elite institutions, are graduating with very limited literacy and numeracy skills. As a result, professors at universities are finding students cannot complete reading assignments, yet some like Yale are still awarding high grades. These students are going to become doctors, administrators, media figures, judges, politicians, generals, etc. If you don’t read long format, you can’t grasp the lessons of history. If you don’t intimately understand numbers, you can’t rank probabilities and assess the relative importance or truth of propositions. In other words, fewer and fewer of today’s leaders have developed sufficient thinking skills to assess the complex risks posed by the development of bioweapons and biotechnology in general.
Politicians need to take note. Some are. The penny has dropped in Denmark which is rolling back digital education, because the replacement of books with tablets caused a dramatic loss in the capacity to concentrate. Too many hours spent on social media are also taking a toll on mental health. Since the beginning of the current school year in Denmark, there are no mobile phones or tablets allowed in classrooms during the school day. If levels of literacy and numeracy decline, extreme ideas more easily take root that bear little relation to reality. Mastery of reading, writing and arithmetic engages the brain in systematic patterns of thinking which confer a life long legacy of common sense and the ability to assess evidence.
Research shows that what you pay attention to creates structures in the brain. Long format reading and writing assignments in higher education or the analysis of large data sets using hand drawn graphical tools confer an appreciation of critical holistic aspects of knowledge that are not easily developed if you let the computer do it all for you. Excessive screen time actually retards brain development as this video from the BBC discusses:
There is a human need to experience the source of thought within
The underlying law of thought that is being routinely violated in modern life involves constant distraction which prevents deeper understanding of one’s true situation. The value of quiet reflection is universally recognised by religions, cultures and philosophies around the world. “Be still and know that I am God” is found in the Bible, the original Hebrew word for ‘be still’ is rapha which means to let go, signifying an end to anxious efforts. The Vedas reveal the non-dual peaceful state of the inner self which it enjoins has to be known. Buddhist texts describe inner peace as “wisdom wrapped in stillness”. Maori culture values what lies beneath the surface. “Ma te whakarongo, ka mohio; ma te mohio, ka marama; ma te marama, ka matau; ma te matau, ka ora.” translates as: “Through listening comes knowledge, through knowledge comes understanding, through understanding comes wisdom, through wisdom comes wellbeing”. Sufi adept Rumi likened silence to the ocean and speech to a river. He told his followers not to get lost in the river of words, rather listen to the ocean. A Native American saying: “Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows”. Chinese Taoist Lao Tzu said “To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
None of these should be thought of as mere intellectual ideas. Such sayings are not philosophical fancies, they illustrate a fundamental property of the thinking mind. Thought has an expressed range and a silent depth. If we are constantly lost in the superficial expressed range of thought and experience, we miss the depth of understanding. Inner silence is not a dull or sleepy state, it contains quiet dynamism like the rested state of the arrow drawn back on the bow about to fly forth. As we have discussed in our recent Substack article “The Sacred Cell and Consciousness Genes”, this mirrors the laws of quantum mechanics which reveal there is a least excited ground state of any system which contains all the possible excited states within it. This unified field is awake, our cells utilise this source of order, because they are made from it. More unity equates with higher order, just as the deeper levels of inner silence of consciousness contain wisdom and understanding.
This unified property of consciousness inevitably becomes lost to view through the long corridor of time, because it is overshadowed by the outer sensory field. But just as inevitably it is rediscovered and revived in every age. This is because it is a natural ability of the human mind to experience self-referral consciousness. Throughout the ages those who have been successful in the quest for self-knowledge have been honoured, especially if they can teach that experience to others. There is a process of transcending to be engaged, as the Bible says “it is a movement and a rest”. Meditation is not the property of any one group, it is a process of allowing the mind to settle to its ground state of universal consciousness which is a state of knowingness. This process has been taught by teachers of higher consciousness in every age. Today it is the need of the time, as it is in every age. Only the urgency has increased due to the rise of destructive technologies. In my book Your DNA Diet I have explained the mechanism of transforming world consciousness with meditation based on careful research and traditional knowledge.
The world is going through a transition, that should be obvious to everyone. Whether that occurs because of destructive technologies or because of a rise of consciousness is largely up to us. These two processes have different outcomes—one desirable, one not. As Robert Frost said “two roads diverged in a wood”. Time is running out. We have to decide where we go from here. This can be an individual decision, but it can also become the goal of a society needing to change. We have the resources to effect positive change within ourselves, not by thinking but by transcending thinking to its source.
The relentless march of invasive technology has taken civilisation to the brink of collapse, but there is still time to employ a technology of consciousness to begin to reverse the direction of destruction and the looming prospect of conflict and disease. This is not a religious dogma or belief, it is an innate ability of the nervous system. Contained in the ability to run is the ability to walk, to sit down. Great activity contains lesser activity. Rest and activity go together as the steps of progress. Contained in the ability to think is the ability to be quiet within. Studies show how the whole physiology including the brain responds to this experience. The brain becomes more orderly or coherent and the body more healthy. This is not something that can be run on a computer or distilled in a test tube, it is a natural self-referral process. There are those who can provide initial guidance and then quiet meditation can be routinely practiced self-sufficiently at home for a few minutes morning and evening. This starts and ends the day with understanding, peace, happiness and holistic health. This is the need of our time.
