Lurking pathogens

Chinese medicine recognizes a category of pathogens with topical significance, called "lurking pathogens".

These pathogens enter the body from the outside, usually cause an initial display of symptoms, then hide away in some recess of the body where they appear to be dormant for a time (but still cause meaningful harm). Then they emerge from hiding periodically and produce symptoms.

Many pathogens can be lurking pathogens. The most currently relevant is the pathogen that underlies "long COVID", but pathogens corresponding to the flu, strep, and other infections can also lurk. Varicella zoster first appears as chicken pox, then lurks and later causes shingles.

A pathogen becomes a lurking pathogen when a host's defenses are not strong enough to just kick it out.

It emerges anytime an event occurs that temporarily weakens the host further: another infection, poor diet, alcohol, stress, overwork, strong or prolonged emotion. Then it sinks back into hiding again.

Symptoms can vary, but they're usually of a warm nature: fevers, hot flashes, night sweats, rashes, thirst, irritability, headache. Pain and fatigue are quite common.

A key characteristic of lurking-pathogen infections is that they intermittently come and go.

They are a factor in many modern autoimmune and allergic conditions.

Battle scars

One acquires these over the course of a life.

For me, there's joint pain and a low back injury from an early athletic career, scars from abdominal surgery, and some hearing loss in my right ear from an infection. And the emotional ones.

All well managed, I believe. Injury comes with the territory, but one should still treat or manage whenever possible.

Even better, one should prevent when possible, without significant loss of connection or opportunity.

Some people have a lot of battle scars, some have few.

Some don't make it through.

There's nothing abnormal about experiencing grief related to all of this. But it needn't disqualify a person from experiencing joy.

The last thing we should expect is to remain pristine.

Jonathan's rules for life

There's an ongoing trend amongst artists and other influencers to produce a list of 8-12 rules to live by.

Stanford economist Russ Roberts published his 12 Rules for Life: Rule # 1: Learn to enjoy saying “I don’t know” [...] Rule # 5: Read Read Read [...] Rule # 9: If your child offers you a hand to hold, take it [...]

Actor Jeff Goldblum has 8 Rules to Live By: Rule # 1: Keep your hygiene up [...]

Writer Malcolm Gladwell did a Revisionist History podcast episode inspired by this trend. His list is my favorite.

I've been thinking about this idea for five or six years. What would my rules be? So far I've come up with two that have stuck.

The first has to do with consistently employing the "We'll see" response. It's the best of Eastern philosophy in a nutshell.

My second rule for life is Never try to civilize.

Civilizing means, when I see another person behaving in a way that is not upright (like aggressive driving or putting cardboard in the garbage), I confront that person and instruct them about why their behavior is not helpful and how they can do better.

It really seems like the right thing to do sometimes, especially since I'm a serious fan of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's works (The West Wing, The Newsroom, Charlie Wilson's War). His heroes are usually expert and unapologetic civilizers.

But there are a few problems with this activity in the context of real life.

First, Sorkin isn't writing my words before I say them.

Second, it would seem that most people who behave inappropriately do not want to change, at least not in the moment and not while being criticized. They often express rage and strengthen their fortresses of impropriety. Then, despite my best resolve, their reactions usually awaken the worst in me. Overall, a net badness output.

Third, this activity assumes that I always know what upright means. As a rule... that kind of assumption is risky.

Instead of trying to civilize, I've resolved to try these:

1. Osmosis - Adults are just large children (despite ideas to the contrary), and children learn by osmosis, not instruction. They adopt the behaviors they observe in their caregivers, not so much the ideas and principles their caregivers communicate with words (if you yell at a kid to "Stop screaming! You're making a scene!", you're just teaching them to yell and make a scene). Teach propriety by being proper.

2. Preach to the choir - It's how you get them to sing! Find the people who are already putting out goodness and use all your skills to support them. A collective chorus will be harder to miss than your singular croon. Maybe the jerks out there will stop and consider joining in (probably not), but as your song gets sung more widely, it has a better chance of getting stuck in their heads.

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Sometimes you have to take a stand against the jerk. But the great civil rights lawyers knew that the most important audience was their supporters in the far back of the courtroom. And I would argue that MLK spent his most influential moments modeling humaneness and preaching to the choir.

Happy BHM. We should go on and sing.