Emerging Signals

Everybody eventually has to grapple, gently, with that most existential question of all questions: "What is truth?" 

Artists take it on, directly or obliquely. Politicians and propagandists manipulate it to conform with their own purposes. Scientists test it by investigating hypotheses. 

Journalists uncover the discoverable facts and strive to present them in a form that allows people to reach their own conclusions. One of the mantras for journalists and story-tellers is "show, don't tell." It is not up to us to tell you what to think -- we leave that to others.

Our work is mainly about fairness, balance, attribution and methodological transparency. There is also room for informed opinion and analysis.

The best we can do, when we adhere to our highest standards, is to show you the patterns we have been able to identify, and to amplify the signals that emerge from the noise.

***

Sorting out the truth these days is harder than usual. Everyone is having coronavirus dreams, clouding our vision, as we sort through our anxieties in the new circumstances.

We locate various strategies. I find myself watching war movies, not because I like war movies but because these stories capture the romantic intrigue of how people behave under extreme conditions. These movies also act as an outlet for the anger I feel at an enemy I can't see or feel.

At least in the movies, when bombs go off in the distance, a conventional enemy is announcing his approach.

But this invader is already here among us and probably has been for a long time. It may be a decade until the origin of Corona-V emerges; all we know now is that we know very little. indeed

There is a marvelous book, "The River : A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS" by Edward Hooper, that suggests what a retrospective investigation into the origin of Corona-V may reveal. It will require a journey not unlike those undertaken by the great explorers who sought the origins of our great rivers or the secrets of the Amazon.

But the Corona-V investigation will have to be conducted largely through the lens of a microscope, the medium of plasma, the interactive behavior of human beings and the tiny creatures that inhabit our environment and find their way inside our bodies. It will be a story of mutation, adaptation, and immunological reactions.

Then there will be the social, political and economic chapters of that future story: How Corona-V disrupted the existing order and reshaped the systems by which we organize our societies.

Above all, and here I speculate, will be the uber-narrative of climate change. Nothing I've read has shaken my conviction that Corona-V is a symptom of global climate change, and that it will demand environmental adaptations that the human species has rarely if ever faced before.

***

Sometimes, alone in the darkness, my body tenses. I stretch my legs out as far as they will go as part of some sort of reflexive motion that precedes the moment sleep will arrive. It's happened so often over the years that when I feel it now it relieves me of all tension; my body is telling me that peace is at hand.

In this state, I often imagine things beyond the realm of possibility.

And then go on to know them in my dreams.

-30-