You are a holobiont, I am a holobiont, we are all holobionts. "Holobiont" means, literally, "whole living creature." It ...
A splendid song, splendidly sung by Jonna Jinton, Swedish singer. The images are haunting and beautiful, suggesting the beauty of the forest inhabited by wolves, humans, and other creatures that form a single system, holobionts within the greater holobiont that covers the land. A few minutes of bliss, welcome in the difficult times we are living.
These are the words in Swedish ("vargen" means wolves) -- Here you can find a more traditional version. Note how gentle and compassionate is the song, with the mother
understanding the hunger and the distress of the wolf and willing to
give it a pig tail or a chicken shank.
And here is a version in English (translated using Google, revised using common sense, as I don't speak Swedish. May not be perfect).
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is reported to have said, "Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love." His paintings have a certain "holobiontic" quality. This one, "Les Amoureux de Vence" was painted in 1957,
What do holobionts, empathy, and harmony have in common with sex? One thing: they are all forms of horizontal transmission of information. We tend to see ourselves as multicellular organisms and, for us, sex is indeed a "horizontal" thing, in a certain sense.
But, sex was not invented by multicellular creatures. On this planet, sex is mostly something that bacteria engage in, freely exchanging genetic materials among themselves. It is free love that goes on all the time among single-celled creatures. And it is the way they evolve. It is by exchanging genetic materials that bacteria have become more and more capable to resist to the human attacks against them by means of antibiotics.
And even viruses, which can't reproduce by themselves, have sex with each other. It is just that they can only do that when two different viruses find themselves in the same host cell. That can become even a little weird when the two viruses come from different previous hosts, say a pangolin and a human being. In any case, viruses evolve very fast, that's why almost every year a new wave of influenza spreads over the world.
For larger holobionts, such as human beings, the situation is different when you consider the reproductive mechanism of the main organism, the human one. Two human organisms exchange genetic information, but then this information must be "read" in a complex process that involves the birth of a new human being (and, unfortunately, the death of the old one). It is slow: in terms of evolutionary prowess, viruses and bacteria run circles around us. Fortunately, our immune system can also change fast enough to match the new threats, and we are also defended by the "good" biome that form the human holobiont, the bacterial and viral symbionts we carry with us. And we are part of the larger holobiont we call the ecosystem.
Holobionts are fractal systems: the true embodiment of the poem of Jonathan Swift
The Vermin only teaze and pinch
Their Foes superior by an Inch.
So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller yet to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum:
And so it goes.
A clip from "Dust." They are a company specialized in airing short sfi-fi films. The quality of what you can see is very variable, goes from the boring to the silly, includes the very clever, and sometimes true gems.
I thought I could inflict on you this clip not because it is especially good, but not so bad, either. It may be good as entertainment. It has distinct "1950s" feel and it could go in the same category as the old "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." What's strange is that it was made in 2020 and one could think we had overcome that attitude of old that saw non-human creatures as monsters.
Here, we have a good example of the current wave of "biophobia" -- it is the story of a young woman who is bitten by a mosquito. Then, the mosquito flies to meet a subterranean monster who uses the genetic information contained in the woman's blood to create a clone of her.
As I said, not bad as entertainment but, as biophobia goes, this is the way many of us see the creatures that surround us. Creatures to be kept away from our bodies as much as possible, least we'd be contaminated. And, in the end, I think the clip has a logic that perhaps even its authors didn't realize: it is our fear of sickness, our fear of death, our fear of bodily decay. All amplified by the tiny monster we call coronavirus -- a name that brings a hint of the crown that death used to wear in medieval iconography, a symbol of power.
All fears that have taken over our minds everywhere. And how the woman of the clip sees he double is as she sees herself as in a mirror. It tells us a lot of how we see ourselves nowadays. We are scared of our fellow human beings, a monstruous, innatural, unimaginable (up to now) feeling. It is, first of all, a sickness of the mind. We will not be healed we come to a pact with nature, only then we'll be able to understand who we are. Onward, fellow holobionts!
A contribute by Robinne Gray
According to what I heard from the people who remember these things, I think I was able to locate where you could buy live lice in Florence to swallow to cure your jaundice. A typical holobiont thing to do.
The old lady who sold these lice lived - I believe - in the house with the small arched door of this street called "Via Camaldoli." She was called "La Pidocchina," that is, "the little lady louse."
I didn't try to ring the bell to ask if someone in there still sold live lice. But, who knows?