alternative culture jam

Percolating throughout the Covid era has been the riddle of riddles, “Do viruses exist?” To ignore this fundamental skepticism risks being branded “controlled opposition” or simply naïve. To pose the question risks, from the other side, accusations of derailing the discussion of more practical matters that normies can relate to, and failing to keep some rabbit holes safely off limits.

Having delved into arguments and evidence (or lack thereof) on both sides, I’m satisfied to conclude at last that, like everything else in this universe of philosophical interpretation, it’s a matter of quantum entanglement. In other words, the so-called “virus” at the center of all our fears is either a “particle” or a “wave,” depending on how you look at it, and what you are looking for.

Science amateurs like me don’t have to have a degree in quantum physics to get the gist of it: it was already laid out by Lao-Tse thousands of years ago in calligraphic verse. The same principle applies wherever we look: in politics, arts, cosmology, or nature. It’s a function of creation itself, of language, of metaphysics.

Take any number of terms from the quantum field of politics, for example: corruption, democracy, racism, fascist, public health…

Beauty, or good and evil, is in the eye of the beholder. Any of the above derogatory or praiseworthy terms can be arbitrarily assigned to the faction of your choice… assuming you have a choice. Naturally, in a controlled system like any human society, it’s the default choice that is presented first—enforced, boosted, reinforced, amplified, regulated, bioengineered.

Back to the viruses, or lack thereof… it does no good to get stuck in the weeds of microbiology, epidemiology, vaccine development, purification protocols. You get what you are predisposed to get. You’re a Pasteurizer or a Bechampion, and it’s all a matter of spin. One man’s particle is another woman’s wave, and occasionally the twain may meet, if your mind is open enough to the possibility that Yin and Yang can coexist: they are just two sides of the same quantum coin we use to tithe to that supreme deity, Reality.

Likewise (speaking of the Covid era, still percolating and shedding its repercussions as we speak) we can pose the question of what is happening today in the world at large:

Zeitgeist 2023: Chaos or Awakening?

Again, the answer depends on your lens, the story you live by. Are you sapped by fear, addicted to bad news, a reactor to Chaos? Or does all that darkness fuel an upsurge of redeeming Light, a mass Awakening to the exact degree that is demanded by the enormity of the challenge?

Both perspectives have evidence and legions of believers. Can they both be right? What is true?

You decide. But it’s also more than your own stance. Step back and consider the whole. Given the array of forces on both sides of the Battle for Reality, the War for the Future, it’s only fair to acknowledge that black and white are complementary, codependent, as twinned as Yin and Yang in the spinning world egg.

Choice then is more relevant to where you put your energy, how you spin your prayer wheel. You can choose to feed the madness with more anger and despair, or you can choose to ease the suffering with grace and equanimity. Either way, the dance continues, snarling met with kisses, darkness with dawn. Around the wet world rolls, seabirds flying in and out of our tawdry circus tents, bound at day’s end for a perch of silence before a setting sun.