Life is about the accidental survival of a protein soup. it seems to have gone downhill ever since it started to breed.

This soup developed structures by accidental encounters within and outside of it. By end of this early process, in order to survive, proteins developed individuality — being in need to consume other proteins (dead or alive), sugars (carbs) and fat (lipids). Carbs and lipids are not alive. Some proteins are, some are not. Enzymes are on the cusp. So, since the dawn of life in the first protein soup made of amino-acids, enzymes and basic proteins, evolution has led to the speciation of proteins for survival alone, in various environments with no reason but a purpose of adaptation to the changes, and a walk in the park. 


This speciation led to the development of various protection mechanisms, including aggressiveness (with defence and escape) and receptivity. this makes proper sense of the accident where the proteins now argue and fight about responsibility like two idiots in a car crash. This is why we developed the idea of god, like an insurance company.

If you don’t understand any of this, go to church and follow this inexistent god (God is a male) that is far more loving, more troubling, inconsistent, stupid, illogical, bipolar and vengeful than you can imagine since he is the devil as well. Imagine that god was perfection itself, but the devil came out of him like a bad smell out of his arse since god (god is a male with an arse) was made in our image — or was it the reverse? Thus the god theory does not make any sense, though it has been a beacon for too long, now vanishing like a lie that has run its course.

Anyway, after a few billion years, the protein soup has led to the status of life we now today. On this planet, the environmental conditions were — are and will be (hopefully)  — propitious enough to help evolution (though extinction beckons when the changes in environmental factors are too fast or too difficult for “adaptation"). In this environment we have to emphasise, amongst other factors, the importance of a specific temperature range. Most lifeforms (organised proteins) cannot survive in too hot or too cold environments. The Maurice is an expert on the subject — asking us to prepare for an incoming ice age. Unlikely for another 45,000 years as we burn fossil fuel, but time flies as he says. Be alert anyway.

Superheated water — at temperatures of more than 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius) — spews from the vents. An entire ecosystem clings to the chimney-like columns, with worms and many other species consuming each other and the mineral-laden hydrothermal fluids. Exploring the deep-sea vents helps scientists determine the upper temperature limits for life.

The fleshy pink Pompeii worm (Alvinella pompejana) is one of the most extreme of the deep-sea creatures, perching its long, bristly tubes right next to the shimmering vent fluids. Earlier research had pegged the Pompeii worm's comfort zone as high as 140 F (60 C), far beyond that of other animals. But genetic and protein studies showed the worm's tissues would unravel at such high temperatures, just like raw eggs change when cooked.

Some bacterias and viruses (well-organised proteins, 99.9 per cent of which are harmless, even beneficial to our own survival but we spray them with KillBug anyway) will survive temperatures above boiling point. This is why we have invented the hospital “autoclaves” that cook microbes beyond this point. We call this “sterilisation".

At present, in this unplanned evolution of proteins since the “dawn of time", the human protein — its survival against other proteins and its own — is dominant, it seems without limits. This uncanny protein has invented a game of capitalisation in which an average 10 per cent of payola is added in all proteinic transactions, and this demands more human proteins on the planet for this unsustainable capitalisation to sustain itself. All the other diverse proteins are being gobbled up in the process. Thus the soup is becoming mono-cultured and smelly. We know that.

By the way, if you have not noticed yet, most insects are sluggish in lower temperatures. The higher the temperature the spritzer they become. You don’t see Cicadas come out in the middle of winter. During the hot Australian summer you become swarmed by flies that love your salty sweat, in the outback — a region where there is nothing else but flies. 
In warm temperatures, citrus stink-bugs will readily escape a threat by flying off fast (they usually let themselves fall off, using gravity while flying “downwards”) after having sprayed the attacker with stinking liquid (oh boy does it hurt the eyes) and hide. In cooler temperature, these bugs seems to barely turn around and easily fall prey to the “threat” (usually, my extended grabbing tool). I am the Eliminator (the “Terminator" of stink bugs). They come back every spring like a bad sequel, and one needs to be vigilant.

The most basic of live proteins will work with the two most important levers of psychology: aggressiveness and receptivity. War and love. Aggressiveness leads to attack, defence, escape, while receptivity leads to reproduction as well as the processing of food. Now you know. 
Many species have no idea, unlike the clever human species that understands everything, about this process but they react in the same way anyway. Dogs will be dogs. Some animal species are clued enough to explore the territorial limits of their aggressiveness and to share a love nest in their receptivity. Cuddles of the lorikeets.

Here we are now. 
The association of many cells that develop from a fertilised core unit, becomes us, including our “spirit”. Genes are pure proteins in this soup of proteins. We are hydrocarbons with a lifespan, equipped with various sensors and investigative units — like the news and the weather report that tell us we need 40 per cent of an umbrella today because there is 40 per cent chance of rain. Ah, perceptions….... 

Connection between language and perception gives us our “spirit”. Imperfection in the relationship, including misunderstanding of threats and sexual density, is complicated by various social codes. In fact (I hope it is a fact), our human memory has grown larger than necessary to survive, and we fill the space with “stylistic” interpretations of what we think things mean. Things don’t mean anything. There is no meaning, only processes. So whatever we choose as meaning can do, until it means nothing. Simple. For us, this choice turns into a complexity of management of information, from personal reactivity to social dictums, including believing we have no choice in the matter — especially when having to vote for DumDumb or Dumdonette. We try to manage this for the better of us, singularly and socially. We are a social species, like rats. A lonely rat is a sad rat.

"Imperfection is freedom", says an introduction to an article about a new movie, in Sciences, the AAAS magazine of the 12 of January. The movie is “Recombinant” (what a silly title!), one of the next generation of Frankenstein on the silver screen. Any reader who has followed my opinionated views on this site would know that I have expressed the same concept by claiming “perfection is death”. With perfection, nothing can change. Change is the essence of life. In the same magazine there is an article about our idiosyncrasies — a witty romp through evolution revealing a trove of curiosity in mammalian biology, including that the male gonads lead to the invention of football (and other sport's codes involving “balls”)...

But this section is about similar battles and fear in deception, here within ourselves: Jekyll and Hyde.
We all have a bit of “devil”, “god”, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde in all of us. It’s natural. It’s based on our singular aggressiveness and receptivity that we learn to manage, usually badly. For us, the trick of our social survival is to manage this complexity of influences without killing anyone nor ourself. Most of us tend to become sheep and follow the general instructions of social behaviour that includes the controlling aspect of religions and hierarchy. We submit. We have our local bout of aggressive behaviour but in most cases it is confined to a bit of anger and annoyance, without further effect. 

In the Walpurgisnachtstraum of Faust, a lot of these thoughts are explored in the form of allegories. Digging deep into Shakespeare, Goethe revisit the Midsummer Night's Dream, a few years later hence, in a tragic pseudo-comedy gone bad. It's a nightmare. A Midsummer Night's Dream, the comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595/96, portrays the events surrounding the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, the former queen of the Amazons. This dream includes the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (the mechanicals) who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. We know them, the kritters at the bottom of our gardens.

The Walpurgisnachtstraum is a transportation of this heavenly "dream" into hell… There, the witches, the demons and the ordinary folks get mixed up in various illusions where Faust fleetingly sees his “beloved”  Gretchen (short for Margarete) taken away from him… The dialogue between the various entities is representative of humanity at the time, fast degrading under the spell of hellish delusions. 



Says The Dogmatic:

I, without fear, support him,
the opinions against doubt are a whim,
As the devil is something,
how come would he be nothing?



Says The Windvane facing one way:

Great company here
Men, women are all ear,
people of great hope ;
can we desire better?



Says The Windvane facing the other way:

if the earth soon cracks
an abyss to this riffraff
in hell they’d go
and I'd go there presto. 


But as we are Jekyll and Hyde, we combine, like the windvane, the two sides of whom we are, and chose opportune moments to be “good" or "evil”. Humans, especially those of the higher echelons, are generally hypocrites by our natural evolution. This has made us the best survivalists of all nature. The more hypocritical we are, the more we get to the top. This was Socrates assessment of politicians of his time. He hated them. 

But this hypocrisy creates problems. We trust few — or no-one. Not even god, nor the devil, nor ourselves unless we make a pact and become sociopath. Where the “devil” is making Faust become a monster, in Jekyll and Hyde, chemistry is the culprit. This was written at a time when sciences were starting to make a real mark on society. Frankenstein grew from “sciences” too...

In reality, we always find excuses for our poor behaviour and we blame whatever, rarely ourselves. We can do better. We do not have to eliminate our aggressiveness  but to control it and only use it in self-defence. But, we are very good at lying to ourselves and hypocrisy will make us define aggression as self-defence, weapon merchandising as a lovely trade, when this aggro is no other than a grab-all of someone else’s territory, resources — and even minds, with missionaries. 
Hypocrisy is the danger — not pure rage… Rage? We get locked up. A smart hypocrite? We get the Presidency. And I am not exclusive about Trump, but about all of them since George Washington, Napoleon and Julius Caesar. We might  need these hypocrites to defend our social group, but sometimes we forget to contain them. I know Julius fell to “et tu Brutus…". Tame them? To keep us at our station, our leaders love to maintain the illusion of religious "loaves and fishes” history above the rationalism of sciences. 

Conveniently, the Catholic bible was expunged of stories that did exist in the jewish text but did not fit the streamlined lie of the new Constantine religious narrative. For example: 
Lilith (/ˈlɪlɪθ/; Hebrew: לִילִית‎ Lîlîṯ) is an old figure in Jewish mythology, but developed in the Babylonian Talmud (3rd to 5th centuries). This story goes way back before being Talmuded. Lilith has been often envisioned as a demon of the night, sexually wanton, and a female who steals babies in the darkness. The character mostly derives from illusions of female demons in ancient Mesopotamian religion, described in cuneiform texts of Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, and Babylonia. Why pick on women when men are mostly the sexual predators is beyond me. Another excuses for the footballers' behaviour.

In Jewish folklore, from the satirical book Alphabet of Sirach (c. 700–1000) onwards, Lilith appears as Adam's first wife, who was created at the same time than Adam and made from the same dirt as him – compare Genesis 1:27 (So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.) with Eve, who was created after man from one of Adam's ribs: Genesis 2:22. 
The legend of Lilith developed nicely during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadah, the Zohar, and Jewish mysticism. In the 13th-century writings of Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden (she hated the place for do-gooders) after she had sex with the archangel Samael (the demon). Good luck to her… 

Lilith thus appears succinctly in Faust. Obligatory...

As well, Goethe offers some ideals about politics.


The General:

You are foolish to trust the nations!
because it is a waste to work for them;
For people, as for beauty meme
youth is the master of volitions.


And comes the Proctophantasmist — the "ghost of the shit-hole” (true translation)… 

Here, we know about the new one in its full splendor, with a coiffe of golden tinted hair, haunting the oval orifice. After having complained about “the” dancing of the fairies looking like ancient witches, the Proctophantasmist “will go into a pond, where a leech will suck the blood out of his arse. He will be cured from the spirit of the spirits” says Mephistopheles (the demon)… Let’s hope the devil is right.

We do not demand a leap of faith but a toe-dipping into scientific understanding. And this is difficult because there is a surface interaction that hides (Hyde) an enormous set of very mind-boggling complex but ACCURATE processes. Everyday, sciences explore more and more of these real complexity, yet most of us prefer being charmed by the simplicity of fairies, gods and demons. In beautiful hell we trust.

Jekyll and Hyde barely pass the scientific test, yet, the concept that “chemicals can modify our behaviour” is not new. Opiates, poisons, magic mushrooms — and mould on bread like for the “witches of Salem. We drink wine, coffee, tea and other beverages that change our consciousness and our morphology, including sugary drinks. 


The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a gothic novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson first published in 1886. The work is also known as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll and the evil Edward Hyde. The novella's impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the very phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" coming to mean a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next.

In early March, Jekyll's butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson and says Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for weeks. Utterson and Poole break into the laboratory, where they find Hyde wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead from suicide. They find a letter from Jekyll to Utterson. Jekyll's letter explains that he had indulged in unstated vices and feared discovery. He found a way to transform himself and thereby indulge his vices without fear of detection. Jekyll's transformed personality, Hyde, was evil, self-indulgent, and uncaring to anyone but himself. Initially, Jekyll controlled the transformations with the serum, but one night, he became Hyde involuntarily in his sleep.

Happy dreams of being upright.
We have turned into the “devil”… Here with Faust, Frankenstein, and Jekyll and Hyde, we have a trilogy of frightening stories. There are others, most of which involve monsters, dragons and wild beasts, but none that thorough shows that it is us who often turn into monsters, especially as we become more powerful in the social ladder. We sell ourselves to the devil, make ourselves out of spare parts and indulge in potions that turn us into crap. This is real fear kingdom. The others are pissy. In science fiction, one movie I have mentioned already stands out: "Forbidden Planet". Here the subconscient of people have been multiplied by a machine and become a separate entity of "evil". We are on the eve of Artificial Intelligence and in the same way as we can maintain “angels” with organ transplant, we can maintain and develop better sanity with Artificial Intelligence on our side. We should and we might have to, as, we, in general, are basically loonies in waiting. Our leaders, those of our human species, are simply loonier.

Let’s move on. Now a little bit about the picture at top: Lilith painted by John Collier...

In The religion of an artist (1926) Collier explains "... I am looking forward to a time when ethics will have taken the place of religion... My religion is really negative. [The benefits of religion] can be attained by other means which are less conducive to strife and which put less strain on upon the reasoning faculties.” This was about secularity. "My standard is frankly utilitarian. As far as morality is intuitive, I think it may be reduced to an inherent impulse of kindliness towards our fellow citizens." His views on ethics, then, were very close to the agnosticism of T.H. Huxley and the humanism of Julian Huxley.

On the idea of God: "People may claim without much exaggeration that the belief in God is universal. They omit to add that superstition, often of the most degraded kind, is just as universal."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Collier_(painter)


That we mix god and superstition is a given. that we need sciences to explain the protein soup is essential.

Gus Leonisky
You local general enquirer...