Transformation Through Collapse: How Viruses Have Shaped Our Civilisations

One tiny piece of DNA, surrounded by a layer of proteins, floating in a microscopic droplet of water from someone’s sneeze. That’s all it is, that’s all it takes, to change the course of an entire civilization. A molecule which isn’t even visible on a conventional microscope, yet powerful enough to change the course of history, as it has done hundreds of times before. From mysterious illnesses that wiped out ancient civilizations to the viruses that wiped out much of indigenous Native American populations, to the famous Plague of Athens that brought down an empire, we have been shaped by viruses much more than we realise. Viruses are a reminder that predators do not have to be large wild animals. They don’t even need to be sentient life-forms. No matter how powerful humans think they are, their hardware is as susceptible as that of other organisms, and their software, their DNA, uses the exact same language as all other organisms. Viruses can “read” our code for breakfast, and launch a cyberattack with incredible precision. It’s what they do.

All viruses begin their infection by managing to get past the lock-and-key security mechanism of every cell. Rather than breaking down doors, they launch carefully-designed deceit and distraction missions: they are master blacksmiths, cutting counterfeit keys for just about every lock there is. Masquerading as delivery vehicles for the hungry tissues of our body, they get past security and enter the cell. By the time our immune system has noticed something is wrong, the virus has already made it into the central headquarters, barricaded itself, feet up on the desk, re-writing the cell’s software with new code: to produce thousands and thousands more copies of the virus, until the cell is exhausted and dies. What a cunning, narcissistic little shit.

However many times we change the lock through evolution, a virus will always evolve that will discover the magic combination and break in once more, again and again. It is a cat and mouse game which humans and viruses have played for hundreds of thousands of years, to the point that it is unclear who is the mouse and who is the cat. It is irrelevant. Without a lock there is no key, without a key there is no lock. There is always a struggle, and a stalemate, between locks and keys in the ecosystem. If the locks become too many, keys multiply until one manages to unlock them. If the keys become too many, they die without their lock. It can be argued that our relationship with viruses is a symbiotic one, in the sense that we have occasionally earned benefits from our interaction with them. Viruses may be dangerous, but they are also Earth’s USB sticks: able to transfer information from one genome to another, often from one operating system to another altogether, something Julian Assange would be proud of. While having no hard drive themselves to actually run the software they carry, viruses can run their software once they have entered the cell. All of this copy and paste action occasionally results in the transfer of beneficial genes to the host, resulting in evolutionary “jumps” that dwarf the most impressive Darwinian single-point mutation-led evolution. It is increasingly accepted that viruses, through their ability to integrate pieces of their DNA into our own, have probably played a significant role in evolution. There is concrete evidence of multiple examples of “horizontal gene transfer” i.e. the transfer of genetic material between species that would normally not be able to mate, including species as genetically distant as plants and animals. The bizarre phenomenon of a plant and animal having almost identical genes for certain proteins can only be explained through viruses and other genetic vectors. Although these genes may have originated as cryptoware bugs, they eventually became indispensable parts of our genetic complement.

So, while for years science has argued and debated whether viruses are actually living things, what is certain is that life as we know it today would not exist without viruses. It would probably look vastly different, and evolution would be much slower without them. Viruses are part of the Earth’s ecosystem and they have as much of a right to exist on this planet as we do. In fact, the more we learn about them, the more we can appreciate their role on Earth.

Just before its famous plague, ancient Athens was at its height: it had become an arrogant, capitalist empire. Its fleet of ships would roam the Aegean and even further afield into the colonies, bullying their way into collecting taxes for the Empire from “lesser peoples”. It was truly an empire of modern proportions, driven by the same vices of today’s capitalism: greed, colonialism, racism, subjugation, exploitation.

And then the virus arrived, at the worst possible moment for Athens. Under siege by the Spartans for years, and crowded inside the confines of the citadel, Athenians were the perfect target for a virus. Once it struck, it rapidly spread and decimated a huge proportion of the population. The war ended with victory for the Spartans.

But out of the ashes of this civilisation, a new one was born. A new Athens that was almost the entire opposite of the one before: humble and less materialistic. This version of Athens was penniless: the Spartans had burned all the Athenian ships, so there were no taxes to collect, no pottery and olive oil to export. The economic powerhouse that had ruled the Eastern Mediterranean was over. People were living a meagre existence and going back to basic living. But Athens found something new to export: philosophy.

The Greek Philosophers that we know of and love came not out of the glorious Athens we all know. They came out of the virus-ravaged, humbled Athens. Although this Athens never quite reached the economic dominance of its predecessor, it dominated the rest of human history and civilisation with the wisdom it gained out of its viral trauma and its systemic collapse. Pain gave birth to arts and philosophy, and the new Athenians were a new breed of humans. Having lost everything, they started contemplating the purpose of human existence, what actually matters, what is important in life. They became philosophers, led by a hunger to understand what makes a human, a citizen, a social activist, a good or bad person. Freedom of speech, the right to self-determination, and existentialism were born, all of this because of a virus, to which we owe so much today. Are willing to accept, and learn from, the collapse of industrial civilisation we are currently going through?

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons

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