A Buddhist view of protecting yourself from covid infection and climate extinction

First, the "lower world", the mundane physical covid part. In previous discussion (appended in part below), some of us converged on a two-level picture of the BASICS of how covid spreads. At one level, it spreads like a simple flu or cough infection from nose to nose, mainly by particles in the air. At another level, it goes from nose to lungs and blood, where it causes unique damage. The vaccinations address the second level, but even for those of who have been vaccinated the first level affects our lives, and what we need to do. Ironically, Fauci has at times said things we should notice, trying to point us gently towards a sensible balanced approach. Yes, he has often struggled under powerful politicians -- mainly Trump and Biden, whom he had to take very seriously. And he had to work with FDA, which certainly IS under terrible pressure to honor its primary "stakeholders," mainly big pharma. (I have seen how the current stakeholder system works across many agencies and nations!!) But the JAMA youtube channel tries to get deeper. I remember Fauci's paper (in Science?), posted there, which stressed the MIDDLE WAY -- doing low-cost reasonable things to prevent covid, not wasting energy by rewriting our lives but not ignoring reality either. (Unfortunately, that paper only paid lip service to most of those reasonable things except for masks, and more can be said even about which masks when and how.) So -- to keep YOUR nose clear inside, what can you do? Plamen cited a nasal spray which protects our nose. If you MUST go out to places where the particles may be dense in the air, it is worth the effort. His advice about what spray to buy sounds important. But for me, an even simpler change of habits is very powerful. Simple things can have big effects. (And you can do both if you need to.) Over time, I have learn a graded ladder of TYPES of hot shower. It helps to take such showers regularly anyway, but after coming back from crowded events with covid potential it is especially important. One simple first step is just to heat the water in the pipes leading to your shower. I should do that anyway, to save time and money and hot water, except when I am taking a shower after my wife who already heated the pipes. The easy simple way to heat the pipes is to put salt into a plastic glass, shut the bathroom door, and turn on hot water in the sink. When the water is as hot as I can stand, then put a small amount into the glass, swirl and gargle. Use it like a mouthwash, trying to fill the nasal cavities and throat as much and as long as you can with moderate effort, feel the vapors. Steam and hot water are good ways to kill all kinds of viruses, including covid. Next step, KEEP gargling, as you enter the shower. (That usually means clearing the area a bit -- putting MY towel over the shower door wall, and putting a shirt or towel from the laundry hamper on the floor for when I will come out.) THEN I turn on the hot water in the shower cubicle, and eventually spit out the salt water to the floor, where it drains away to the shower exit pipe. After that, it depends on what LEVEL of shower I choose this time, but in any case, filling the air with steam helps me breathe in hot steam, which is also a crucial benefit for covid or virus risks. The shower is also a perfect place for advanced qi gong or physical therapy exercises, which also benefit from various types of deep breathing with maximum awareness, which we need to cultivate more and more when we age. ========================= So where is the Buddhism here, aside from deep breathing? There are many TYPES of Buddhism worth knowing about and using. (See www.werbos.com/religions.htm for links to photos depicting a few important kinds of Buddhism.) One strand of Buddhism helps people organize their memories and experience into the system of "seven worlds." That is most famous in Japan, but Chogyam Trungpa also has a book on meditation which I studied last year after I read his book Born in TIbet last year. That, and Jung's Red Book, was a great book to read when we were all struggling to survive the first year of covid. In MY life, I tend to simplify it from seven worlds to the three I see every day -- the "lower world" (like the huge forest behind my house), the "middle world" (like our kitchen and like office buildings I often see in Virginia), and the "upper world" (like higher meditation and astral travel, for me our bedroom). SOME Japanese view life as a struggle to rise from the lowest worlds to the highest ones. BUT THIS IS An INCORRECT WAY TO VIEW OUR SITUATION. (See the noosphere species model, also linked to at werbos.com/religions.htm, and in more recent and complete discussions at http://www.werbos.com/mind_brain_soul.htm.) Each of us is a symbiosis of "body" and "soul", where our "soul" is a part of our local noosphere, no matter how high we rise. Yes, the noosphere has higher and lower parts, but nature calls us to INTEGRATE, to connect with other parts both above and below us, and to contribute as much as we can to the whole. Yes, it also calls us to be more effective, more conscious in a way, but only as it flows into the natural mission of contributing to the whole. I think of the climate extinction crisis as a beautiful example of CONNECTING the three worlds as best we can. It requires paying great attention, great awareness to the lowest world of life (and noetic mind) on earth, the level of archaea, the tiny microbes which, among other things, produce H2S. That level of life is what killed off most of the higher life of earth, in most of the great mass extinctions. (Please forgive me, but I am even bcc'ing Peter Ward, lead author of the book by Ward and Kirschvink, the best single volume history ever of life on earth. Chapter 12 discusses the biggest mass extinctions.) But of course, effective climate policy also requires lots of attention to the mundane discussions in those office buildings, often by internet. And in my view, it calls for us to go out to places in deep nature, like my back yard or many of the places in those slides at werbos.com/religions.htm, and connect with them in deep meditation. My wife has even chosen a background for her giant TV, a picture of Sirakawago in Japan, where I will forever remember feeling deep links with old trees, wisps of fog, mountains and sun above, and human settlements, all connected together. Is that the lower world or the upper world? Neither. It is CONNECTED. --- Yeshua might add that life does not end at the borders of our solar system. Indeed. IF we are firmly grounded, sane and connected with life and spirit and science and math WITHIN our solar system, we are THEN ready to peer out and see more clearly into what lies beyond. But without grounding, it can become nothing but a form of insanity at times. We see such insanities every day lately, so MANY forms of them!!! caveat: my apologies to astronomy classes for kids. OK, this is just one side of the issue. How to balance THAT? Well, I remember how long distance interferometry, INTEGRATING outputs from telescopes all over the earth, is what gives us the deepest penetration of many variables beyond our solar system. INTEGRATION lets us noosphere units work together to see further past our noosphere. Let me just close there. On Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 2:26 PM Paul Werbos wrote: Since covid has been discussed seriously on both lists (Google wanted me to replace "lists" with "liars" !!!), I forward the link you sent, which is much more clear and focused than some of the other discussions have been: On Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 1:35 PM Plamen wrote: https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/study-destroys-justification-for?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source= ======================= They are arguing that vaccination often protects the person vaccinated, but is NOT so good for protecting other people. This fits with something I read elsewhere, which claimed that spread is mainly due to virus up in the nose, while actual covid is more a matter of it getting to lungs or blood. The lungs or blood story I know fairly well, because I paid more attention when Italy was first hit by massive disease overloading their hospitals. I will never forget how a leader of hospital efforts said: "Unless they have low SpO2 or low lung capacity, send them home to rest and recover, not to hospital. But send them home with an oximeter (for SpO2 in blood) and a simple good spirometer to measure lung capacity (mine cost $10!), and a number to call if the numbers go out of bounds. " So, yes, it mainly STARTS in the nose, and it doesn't surprise me if the vaccination is more for blood and lungs. We ALL need to use masks to protect other people, when that is an issue. (Crowding, or places of low wind or humidity<20%). And to protect ourselves, which can be less of a problem if we are vaccinated, but that depends on details like how long ago it was and what type, etc. If fewer people get infected, fewer people will pass it on, in any case. All for now. Best of luck, Paul P.S. Since it mainly starts in the nose, I still follow the core ritual I followed at the height of covid in this area, when returning home. Always wash hands AND face, and breathe deeply to try to help with nasal cavities. And use a strong mouthwash, gargling to get it inside. That has other benefits besides covid prevention anyway. What of taking a full hot shower and changing clothes? I do that less now when returning home, but after a crowded or stressful environment it might still be a good idea, in some areas.

Inconvenient questions about human genetic diversity

A friend recently accused me of gross myopia. And no, it's not about "race", which is a confusing fuzzy distraction. Since 2019, I have tried to focus my own personal energy on five real centers of value or telos: (1) reducing the chance that the human species will go extinct within a century or two, due to what some of us now know about climate change (http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm and http://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2021/09/worlds-greatest-engineering-society.html); (2) likewise, reducing the "existential risk" to humanity due to a complex of huge changes coming to the world internet; (3) human potential, as in helping us connect better to the noosphere of which we are a part, embedded of course in a large cosmos; (4) passing on important unique things I have learned in an incredibly information rich life; and (5) working on the kind of direct human connections which keep us all alive. BUT: MYOPIA. Even before huge changes in technology and in our relations to the noosphere changed the path of human history, great civilizations were dying in just a few centuries, more than the century we get for climate and internet effects. Many of the causes of those deaths are still in play. I even proposed doing my PhD thesis on what I learned about those issues before 1972, and the Harvard faculty preferred that over neural networks and backpropagation and such, what I ended up choosing. Selection effects are clearly central to what pathways are really open to humans in the coming millennium, and I am sorry that I have not done as much justice to them as they deserve. but where can an honest and deep enough dialogue be created on that? For my climate and internet concerns, there is at least important public discussion now on "existential threats". But for selection effects? All I can offer now are a few diffuse observations and questions. Back when I was an undergraduate, a classmate once said: "Washington and Jefferson did such a deep job of creating a whole new order, a new social contract. They created a great rat race. But now we who must live in what they created have no choice but to learn to be rats. That's not fair. It's not what I want with MY life." That social vision was grounded in liberte, egalite, fraternity, and I have seen where Lafayette and Washington met. For many years, people in neuroscience and neural networks followed the vision of Donald Hebb, which assumed for neurons what many have assumed for humans: one universal social contract, one learning rule for all neurons, leading to great cooperation. From 1963 to 1964, it was a huge transition for me to understand how and why Hebb was wrong. ONE neuron type does not work. One can build a real intelligent system (without cheating) only by having at least a few very basic very different TYPES of neuron, adapted to different signals, responsive to different feedbacks. The caste system of India worked out in truly horrid, nonsustainable directions, which reminded me of the opening scene of the old Superman movie explaining how the caste system in Krypton caused the explosion and death of that planet. Those risks are very serious, more serious than we would imagine if we only had estern values in play. But simple money-based selection mechanisms ( selecting which genes persist) may be equally fatal, and there is lots of experience showing that too. In nature, speciation is a very pervasive fact of life. No new economic system, whether based on (1) law, on (2) chaos, on (3) gene manipulation or on (4) most varieties of what seems to be Sustainable Intelligent Internet (SII, a new option for social contract) can avoid the very deep and serious implications of whatever selection mechanisms are in effect for humans over future centuries. Anyone who claims that his or her choice from this menu (1 to 4) avoids the existential risks implied here is lying, either to himself and herself or just as a con game. What POSSIBLE sustainable outcomes might be possible? I tend to believe that some kind of SII (http://www.werbos.com/How_to%20Build_Past_Emerging_Internet_Chaos.htm) might be the most workable, maybe. GIVEN that we have brain designs with just a few basic cell/organ types (like giant pyramid cell, limbic ell, etc), perhaps a sustainable intelligent market design which provides for just a few parallel roles in the larger market system, might be sustainable, if it includes the kinds of conflict of interest provisions which we now know are essential to stability even in less intelligent brains. (See the discussion of DHP stability in http://www.werbos.com/HICChapter13.pdf.) A kind of rule-based honorable competition. Alternatives? Well, I see in the EU what happens when folks with roles like that of Schroder migrate to jobs funded by Gazprom, massively perverting EU markets in a way which screws up the EU economy here and now, blocking the kinds of climate technology which COULD be saving us all. Good old fashioned conflict of interest effects, reaching fatal proportions, and not just that one example!!! But I see other modes of gross instability in every other region on earth!! If ALL of us fall into myopia, because we ALL face incentives to do so, then we all die together! The rules need to be better crafted to support the kinds of functions which our brains rely on neocortex to perform. (I do hope Amit and Benjamin will send us URL of our discussion of that in their conference last week.) Best of luck. We all need it... a lot of it... ====================== Deep in my files I still have that thesis proposal to Harvard from 1971/1972. But I know a lot now which I did not know then.

Serious meditation on covid booster as a case study of bigger issues

There are MANY times in this life when performing a small task offers us a chance to learn much larger and important lessons, if only we are open and aware ("conscious"?) enough to see what lessons are offered. For me, this morning [2AM-3AM], in a higher regular meditation time, I feel a duty to pass on SOME of the many lessons which result from thinking about a simple task I will do later this morning: getting a third pfizer covid shot, which I scheduled yesterday (with help from my wife). [I Posted this 6 hours ago on a serious covid discussion list and on two lists studying human consciousness. A key covid guy encouraged me to repost it here.] First interesting part: I had not planned to get the third shot so soon. Coming back to the US from two or three weeks in Greece, mainly revisiting ancient history, I have a lot of important catchup work to do. I was planning to do the catchup stuff first before any kind of covid stuff. But we are grateful to a neighbor who is unusually well-informed about such things, who passed on links first to the report showing less than 50% effectiveness of the shot after 6 months in preventing covid, and then a more radical reduction just a month later. Second: I still have work to do in controlling my own emotions. Thanks to our neighbor, I did look more closely at emails in my gigantic inbox from Arlington county on scheduling vaccinations. I navigated enough to see a link to a close place, a Harris Teeter we visited in past years, and start to schedule an appointment. But a badly designed web page were bad enough to unleash negative hormones, and I was giving up, until my wife calmed me down, took charge for awhile, and reminded me of alternatives, like the nearby Safeway we visit much more often anyway. (Just as close as the Harris Teeter, but the web sites did not know that.) And so at 11AM, I should be there. I feel strange announcing that when I know weird things can undo almost any plan these days, but it LOOKS inevitable this time. Third: the booster shot policy issues in the US are a great case study in public administration, where people work hard but fail to live up to the kinds of standards of rationality and efficiency we should all have learned, following the great work of John Von Neumann, important to policy in bigger and riskier areas like climate, internet policy and human potential, the three areas I have committed to try to help more this month (really, since 2019). (( Side comment: I also see new work on real physics, as in Yeshua's new experiments, as being far more important than covid, as part of these priorities)). Standards of rational and efficient policy include the question: WHY are many of us now offered a third pfizer shot as the only option, when Moderna might be just as good or better for the booster shot? THAT question deserves very serious analysis by folks who know enough to approach it rationally. But for myself, I have lots of thoughts about that serious question, but even more thoughts about how I myself have my own special pattern of connections and dharma and whatnot, urging me to focus much more on those other priorities I mention. I DON'T want to dedicate too much of my OWN limited time and energy to covid. But this issue itself is a beautiful case study in rational first person experience and decision making, more important as a case study than as a thing in itself. It reminds me of another lesson: how many people, people WITHOUT special dharma for covid, waste too much time or energy either fighting covid risk or fighting against reasonable, easy precautions (like the shot I will get this morning). Why do humans waste so much energy in neurotic ways like that? This is ever so basic to real scientifically grounded understanding of human consciousness as it works in reality!! That is worthy of a long discussion on both of the consciousness lists I cc'ed here, but advances in internet company policies make it more difficult to to get you links to important, quick straightforward explanations!! And it is a very big question in any case, based on the connections between issues studied in human psychology (from Freud and Jung to folks like Losscher and Vaillant) and ojr new mathematical understanding of the brain (as in Amit's conference last week, for which recordings will be announced this week). Some of us understood the basic principles of intelligent or conscious systems many years ago, but the issues of neuroses and local minima in human brain development, and then higher creativity, took more years to get a fix on, even just the aspects based on mundane brain function. My slides last week included a nice new flow chart explaining key aspects of what we learned in the paper by Werbos and Davis, easy to find via scholar.google.com if you know about advanced search (as you all should!). That in turn is a reminder that folks who pretend to be omniscient gods on earth really need to work especially hard (as we all should!) to strengthen mundane "first order sanity", as explained in the suite of three papers I published in 2019, linked to from werbos.com/religions.htm. One hour ago, meditation told me to get this down NOW, before I get distracted by other things, but now I will go back to bed, after one small thing on another track... Best of luck, Paul [P.S. It took me an hour to write this, but it covered only about 15% of about 10 minutes in midddle of night meditation. That is typical, except that it is usually between 4AM and 7AM that I get to the highest state I get to in normal life. TRAVEL is different because it offers special new connections in meditation, usually in daytime because that is when we travel. But in Varkisa beach, near Athens, one night, it worked just as well there.]