For to all those who have,
more will be given, and they will
have an abundance; but from
those who have nothing,
even what they have
will be taken away

Daniel Webby >

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Influenza del Freddo

Economic and or cultural capital provides leverage toward obtaining greater economic and or cultural capital. Sociologist Robert Merton described this phenomenon as the Matthew effect, taking the Term from a biblical passage known as the Parable of the Talents. The term “talent”, as it relates to human skill or ability, is believed to originate with this parable. In the historical context a “talent” was a unit of weight used to calculate a sum of value for exchange.

“For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” Matthew 25:29

Seasonal variations of the flu inevitably prove fatal for a small percentage of the population who contract the virus. Worst affected are those with compromised or poorly developed immune systems such as infants and the elderly. Conversely, the 1918 variation of the H1N1 influenza strain proved most deadly for healthy adults; over half of the 50 to 100 million who died were 20 to 40 years of age (1). One suggestion for this is a process known as a cytokine storm; as a strong immune system responds to a highly pathogenic virus, the response itself feeds into the immune system reaction – a positive feedback loop resulting in tissue and organ damage and ultimately death.

David Bohm’s work with quantum theory leads onto a philosophical investigation into the relationship between language, experience and reality. Bohm’s “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” is in part an attempt to describe an ontology capable of accommodating the subject-dependant observations of matter at a quantum level, whilst retaining the Newtonian subject-object ordering principals which had come before. Bohm proposed that to achieve such an ontology, human consciousness must first reconcile the “enfolded” and “unfolded” nature of perception. To this end, Bhom described the rheomode. From the Greek verb rheo: to flow, the rheomode is a linguistic tool intended to develop structures of language “in which movement is to be taken as primary in our thinking and in which this notion will be incorporated into the language structure by allowing the verb rather than the noun to play a primary role” (2). Thankfully examples are provided, such as the below which is derived from the Latin verb, videre: “to see”.

To vidate: calls attention to a spontaneous and unrestricted act of perception of any sort whatsoever, including perception of whether what is seen fits or does not fit, as well as perception even of the very attention-calling function of the word itself.
To re-vidate: to perceive a given content again.
If this content is seen to fit the context of use, we can confirm that;
To re-vidate is re-vidant;
If this content is seen not to fit the context of use we are entitled to say;
To re-vidate is irre-vidant.
Re-vidation: is a continuing state of perceiving a certain content;
Irre-vidation: is a continuing state of being caught in illusion or delusion, with regard to a certain content;
Vidation: is an unrestricted and generalized totality of acts of perception (3).

(1). Simonsen, L; Clarke M, Schonberger L, Arden N, Cox N, Fukuda K (July 1998). “Pandemic versus epidemic influenza
mortality: a pattern of changing age distribution”. J Infect Dis 178: pp. 53–60. online at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pubmed/9652423
(2). Bohm, David (1980). Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. p.30
(3). Ibid, pp. 36-37