When people say the SARS-CoV2 virus is “clever” or “a master of deception”, a “hit and run killer” or even “highly unpredictable”, they make it sound like it has agency, intention and instrumentality.
But, it doesn’t have a plan. It doesn’t know what it’s doing. It doesn’t think. Its existence is not the product of directed, intentional fate.
It exists as a consequence of a series of random unfortunate events, that are controlled by natural, universal laws—laws that apply everywhere and to everything, with no special exemptions or amplifications for humans—given variety by the input of chance.
The virus isn’t clever. It doesn’t think.
It’s hard as humans (with our massive prefrontal cortex that seems to be able to explain everything back to us) to come to terms with the idea that most things in the universe (including our lives) aren’t planned. We’d like to think that we can control stuff, but even our existence is a consequence of the same natural laws.
We tend to put ourselves at the centre of everything. But we aren’t special. We are also an accident. What makes us us is as simple as a shuffle of genetic attributes during meiosis , a few random mutations, and the luck of the draw in the grand sperm race at fertilization.
Not sure where I’m going with this… I think I am just tired of people talking about the virus and thinking that they are in control or the virus is in control.
Like everything in life, we are making it up as we go along.
tribalinsight 