When it comes to the viral issue, the symbiotic relationship of viruses with our body is seldom exposed; It is seldom said that most viruses are parasites with a high capacity for symbiosis. So much so, that many of these viruses end up forming part of our DNA. They are integrated into our cells in such a way that they become part of them. Without going any further, the placenta appeared thanks to the symbiosis that had its origin in an endogenous retrovirus.
Interesting is the biological fact of adaptation by which the two organisms involved in the symbiosis mutually benefit. The “new symbiosis” is one of the many hypotheses that are launched from the media and that implies that we will get out of this pandemic by adapting to a new biological order, a new dimension through which we will come to live with other microorganisms, benefiting from them at the same time that they benefit from us. The parasite benefits from the host and vice versa.
Said like this, the “new symbiosis” thing sounds like a science fiction novel, the genre that the world best contemplates. Already put, it is convenient to remember the story of Olaf Stapledon titled Maker of stars (Minotaur). In it, we have described what life was like in the low waters of the coasts where two species were facing each other. On the one hand, there were the “arachnoids” who were beings that could not spend much time underwater and, on the other, there was the “ichthyoid” that could not get out of it. They were not tolerated. They were rivals from the beginning of time. Something insane, because, as Stapledon tells us, cooperation could be very beneficial for both species, since one of the essential foods of the arachnoids was a parasite of the ichthyoids.
Despite this, the two species struggled to exterminate each other. After a time of war, the less warlike members of both species were discovering the benefits of peace, mutually benefiting, thus forming “biochemical interdependence.Few times has the symbiosis between organisms been told like this, in such a fantastic and brilliant way. After all, if there is something to be clear about this entire pandemic, it is that the virus we are suffering is the effect of a symbiotic process that, at this moment, lives its war phase as at the beginning of time in the story of Stapledon, when life ran in the low waters of the coasts where the “arachnoids” were fighting with the “ichthyoid” because they were not tolerated.
For a long time, human beings have ceased to be part of nature, thus losing their organic relationship with it. The progress of certain corners of our universe implies the regression of other corners of the same universe. The ravages of ecological devastation are taking their toll on us. Hence, such a particular war is developing in our bodies. It is a good time to recover the reading of Star Maker, Stapledon’s beautiful story that constitutes one of the highest peaks of science fiction, and that is projected through the times to explain how we can overcome our present in a way didactic. As Jorge Luis Borges pointed out, “Maker of stars is, in addition to a prodigious novel, a probable or plausible system of the plurality of worlds and their dramatic history.
