LIFE AS A SAMIZDAT II

LIFE AS A SAMIZDAT

(PART II)

Essay by Gustáv Murín

The philosophy of the mower of grass Have you ever seen a guy hunched over and pushing a lawnmower in the garden? I've seen them in their hundreds. Some of them pushed mechanical mowers, others electrical and the richest had small gas mowers. So many technologies and so much effort just for one satisfactory look at someone's private lawn. There's so much other work in this world, so many unbuilt houses, so many machines in need of repair, so many wells to dig out -- and yet their luxury effort with grass makes sense. But not in immediate usefulness in terms of human measurement. This sense is evolutionary and we can call it "remaining in time".
Yes, all of these healthy and powerful guys could get up and go and do something really useful. Yet it is good that they go along on the piece of Earth where destiny has placed them. Without realizing it they are fulfilling the secret task of the "selfish DNA". It remains in different parts of the world and conceals its existence there in human form simply because nobody (not even the seemingly all-powerful "selfish DNA") knows where the right place is for the safest survival. The ones who mow the lawn just for their own pleasure are financially secure, they have a family and children, and they preserve other forms of "selfish DNA" like cats, dogs, guinea pigs or useful breeds. All these are not threatened by hunger and apparent danger. By mowing the grass, they trust in the future. And through this never-ending activity they are occupied so satisfactorily that there is no time for them to stop and start to think about such foolish things as why we are here and what is the meaning of our existence. Because if they were not occupied by this luxurious labor, they might come to the conclusion that our existence has no apparent sense. Let them cut the grass.

Ladder to heaven Have you considered why some of us climb up forbidding peaks where there is nothing, not even the often promised overlook? It would be safer and more comfortable by plane. So, why are they so obsessed to be the first to die on desolate icy plains that, as we nowadays know, offer nothing except an endlessly boring wasteland colored white? Why are they compelled to crawl into steel capsules and descend to the bottom of the ocean although they certainly do not expect us to be able to use such "conquered" territory?

What at first sight is crazy behavior has evolutionary sense. Where the other different form of "selfish" DNA can't go, it'll send these human persons. The reason is that it behaves like Doubting Thomas who never believed what he couldn't see. At the same time it behaves like a blind man who fumbles. It sends us into a wilderness certainly without life to see if there is yet a chance for life. It sends us into desert wastes and into icy plains. It has sent us into the depths of the ocean. All of these as try-out, a warm-up.

The aim of this great effort is clear enough. People are equipped with a brain, because only this can plan and construct the most important task for "genetic carriers" - to overcome the distance between continents and finally the gravitation of the Earth. In our expansion we unwillingly fulfill the role of disseminators of other forms of life too. Some we must take upon ourselves (like plants or domestic animals), some join us against our will (recall for example the rats on the vessels discovering a New World). Thinking to the end, selfish DNA "had to" get to the most suitable variant of the human carrier because the standard form of animal or plant is unable to pass beyond Earth's gravity. This is why it was necessary and useful to wait hundreds of thousands of years until man straightened up, started thinking and achieved social status where some do not need to look after personal survival, but can be interested in something whole senseless - slogging to where it is so cold or on the other hand so hot, where there is neither water nor food and where we cannot even breathe freely. Going to where we are sent by the invisible lady with the initials of three letters - DNA. However, she certainly does not insist that we had to ford and survive the cold waters of space. It is enough for her, if, with our help, new microorganisms, mutated plants or transgenic animals constructed by us is smuggled across. Or, in other words, on the road to heaven the invisible mover of everything needs a reliable ladder. Finally, the whole of human civilization seems to be a complex construction, a starting ramp intended "only" for the spread of "selfish DNA" to the furthest extent possible.

If we desire to find at least a little bit of a dignified place in this mission we could consider ourselves as heralds of a message that is worthy to be spread over the Cosmos. It doesn't have to be either complex information or even a complex sentence. Perhaps this message is just saying that life is possible...

(The End)

(English translation by James and Viera Sutherland-Smith; edited by Robert Murray Davis)


4

LIFE AS A SAMIZDAT I

LIFE AS A SAMIZDAT

(PART I)

Essay by Gustáv Murín

It seems that we've heard a lot about life and its meaning from human sciences. But still there is something missing. So what if we try the science of life - biology?

The most recent knowledge indicates that the carrier of basic genetic information, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), is not so fragile as we've been let to believe. It has preserved traces of its code in even the most unpromising conditions for centuries. Moreover, traces have been found of its more or less independent existence. Thus it is possible with the appropriate techniques to search into the history of this information base of all life. The latest definition of life according to cybernetics is that life is information. This is connected with R. Dawkins' hypothesis of "a selfish gene". According to this theory everything living that we know on this earth is only a more or less complicated "carrier" of this selfish, autonomous information--selfish because it seeks only its own dissemination at the price of destruction of other versions of life. Copulation with murder is not rare in Nature. The male who overcomes another takes over his female and kills his descendants. The female stops breast-feeding, becomes accessible for mating again and in most cases gives birth to the offspring of a murderer who now possess his genes. If somebody think such logic is strange for humans let him go and see Shakespeare's tragedy Richard III.
Dissent strategy of "selfish DNA"Specific conditions in Nature lead to dissent strategy for preservation of life. Dissidents in politically hostile environment try to preserve specific information (as in the fact that in a democracy, freedom of expression and right to travel really can exist). They learned very quickly that this information in one copy may be easily lost. Even if it could be hidden in solid safe, treason or accident will cause that it will be found there. If this one piece of information can be hidden at secret place known only to the author and few others, it could be even worse because oppression of hostile environment may ruin this dissident group before it can reveal the location of that secret place. Thousands years of human experience demonstrate that the most solid fortresses, massive tombs, most sophisticated labyrinths did not protect treasures from robbery. Pyramids are symbols of the naiveté of believing in eternal protection. The only guarantee of preserving such unique treasure, and DNA is especially unique and fragile treasure, is multiplication. In case of dissidents this strategy was called -- samizdat. The more copies of samizdat books they succeeded in producing, the greater the chances were that some of them -- even under pressure of the oppressive power of secret police, political prison, tortures and executions - would survive and fulfill its role. Maybe even thanks to one case, when a single copy of a book was left for long years somewhere on a shelf out of the sight of the secret police. And this is exactly how "selfish DNA" behaves - hidden in most bizarre forms of life. Each had its meaning as even "selfish DNA" does not know which form will be the champion in surviving. What if a pink-dotted bugs with green legs will be the most suitable to go through all obstacles of changes in environment? Could someone even imagine that such an outsider in family of species like the cockroach may be that naturally gifted carrier of this unique message that "selfish DNA" contains? And yet the cockroach seems to be one of the few species that can survive all the horrible consequences of nuclear war!

An information treasureDNA is a miracle of dissemination of information in space and time. It attempts every possible and even impossible, bizarre form of shelter and has found many of them already. It is the most delicate treasure that has ever existed on this planet. With one's thumb an ant can be crushed and one unique copy destroyed forever. This is why there are billions of ants spread over all the continents and there are certainly some in your pantry as well. A long dry period, deep cold or on the contrary too much water and heat, and fragile genetic information will end with this six legged form. That's why some DNA makes copies in forms adapted to water, from shallow to deep waters. That's why there are DNA copies also in forms with legs to have a chance escape if necessary. But that's why there are DNA copies also in forms with roots so they can firmly occupy the largest possible territory on this planet and replicate themselves to the largest extent. That's why some copies have grown also to a gigantic size so that nothing can eat them. But because even the gigantic forms of the dinosaurs were not shown to be eternal, there are copies of the "selfish DNA" hidden even in invisible microbiotic forms and these again are in most incredible places - in the intestines of different species, the vaginas of different kinds of females, even in boiling thermal springs and the always frozen glacier. This is the way how DNA is preserved within space.

"Selfish DNA" not only hides itself but replicates itself in the most incredible forms -- from the noble expression of love between people, through the wedding dances of animals and bizarre mating practices of fish and amphibians, up to untrammeled promiscuity of microbes. This way it insures itself against the destructive power of the non-living as well as living parts of the immediate environment. Some may be surprised that different forms of DNA are not only concurrent, but also fight with each other and consume each other. It is because matter forming "selfish DNA" is complete. Thus every new promising form in which it may reach eternity has priority. This way DNA vigorously opposes the second law of thermodynamics, that with intricate mathematical evidence confirms what Bible says shortly -- you're dust and to dust you will return. "Selfish DNA" does not believe in the fatalism of religion. It does not give up. Never.

(to be continued)

IS FICTION DEAD? IV

IS FICTION DEAD?

(PART IV)

The Poetry of Information

What we really read?

One of the most prominent contemporary Czech writers, Ludvík Vaculík, has said: "I read belles-lettres infrequently. I like to read vocabularies of foreign languages; it's my escape reading." Jaroslav Hašek, the author of the famous Czech satire, The Good Soldier Švejk, once said that to relax he read encyclopedias or children's books. If Ernest Hemmingway had writer's block, he reached for a pile of magazines. Other professional writers take their minds off their work by reading cookbooks.

Modern people, especially those in cities, like to utilize their time as effectively as possible. This is the main appeal of non-fiction, for while it can include stories, it suggests a concentration of practical information with which people believe they can answer their own material exigencies.

The editor of what is considered top-quality fiction at a well-known Prague publishing house has said: "I'm sick of going through somebody's intestines in fiction. I want to read something useful to me, not primarily conceived for somebody else's intellectual masturbation."

Increasingly, in the work of contemporary poets, we run across facts or ideas from the worlds of science and technology. One example is the Czech poet and immunologist, Miroslav Holub, who sprinkles his verse with specialized terms from modern medicine. Likewise, more and more poets' résumés show them working full-time in professions that most people would hardly describe as poetic. The Czech poet Miroslav Huptych, for example, is a nurse in psychiatric clinic. The American poet Wallace Stevens was a senior executive of the Hartford Insurance Agency in Hartford, Connecticut. The Portuguese poet, Casimiro de Brito, is the director of a profitable bank in Lisbon. His famous predecessor French poet Guillaume Apollinaire was only a clerk in bank. Nowadays many followers, like the Estonian poet Karl Martin Sinijärv, are copywriters at respectable advertising companies (in Sinijärv's case, Sacchi & Sacchi).

Likewise, more and more writers are primarily either full-time professional scientists, or have some sort of technical background. From other side those educated in natural sciences are coming with new ideas perfectly fitting into non-fiction frame. Best-selling examples include doctor of the medicine Lewis Thomas, the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, the astrophysicist Alan Lightman, the surgeon Richard Selzer and the cosmologist Carl Sagan. Isaac Asimov, with an incredible output of 400 sci-fi books, was a professor of biochemistry at Berkeley.

Nowadays also authors of serious fiction are established in areas that were once considered the milieu of "pop-literature" -- i.e. non-fiction. Remember Norman Mailer and his The Executioner's Song about the murderer Gary Gilmore, described as a "fully-realized synthesis of fiction and non-fiction" (The Times Literary Supplement, October 16, 1998). Mailer also wrote Of A Fire on the Moon about the 1969 Apollo space launch that put the first man on the moon--a highly technical book that seems to be a mid-step between serious fiction and the technical novels of bestselling writer Tom Clancy a decade later. In Frederick Forsythe's bestseller, The Day of the Jackal, information is compiled with such perfection that one wonders if one isn't reading a historical account. In the 1980s, the success of Arthur Hailey's novels may be likewise attributed to the public's appetite for information. These books are scarcely more than detailed brochures of various service industries and high-powered professions (Airport, Hotel, Wheels, Reporter, Money, Cure, Last Diagnosis, etc.) dressed up with makeshift plots to make them read like novels. Danish author Peter Hoeg used in his bestselling novel "Sense of Ms. Smilla for snow" citations from serious scientific papers about ice. Joseph Heller in one of his last books described his own experience with serious illness called Guillain-Barré with many information from basic medicine. Yet the international successes of these books suggest that we can no longer live in intellectual isolation anywhere. Holes in the ozone layer, for example, bring people from around the world together in their anxiety of how to deal with such a potentially catastrophic problem.

At the end of last century we may see attempt to combine fiction and non-fiction with hope that this combination will save best from both. Story and facts. The results is called Creative Non-fiction and had its own magazine led by Lee Gutkind who wrote in 1998: "We are writing true stories - and this is a base for creative non-fiction - but without interventions to privacy and honesty of others."

Ryszard Kapuściński's cannot be counted as fiction writer, however his best-selling book Emperor is more than non-fiction. Main hero of the book the Ethiopian monarch, Hailie Selassie, is long time dead and his role is almost forgotten. But his portrait is drawn by Kapuściński with the vividness of a well-crafted work of fiction, or like stories told hundreds of years ago by travelers of foreign lands. And this is a good, optimistic news. The story, as a messenger of information, will never die, whether we call it fiction, non-fiction or new offspring - creative non-fiction.

(The End)

IS FICTION DEAD? III

IS FICTION DEAD?

(PART III)

The Poetry of Information

Gulpy consumption, but never headache?

Experiences from our daily agenda are a bricks for our dreams in night. A laboring man may not be interested in cultural artifacts; whiskey is maybe nearer to his normal, biological needs. Intellectual work, however, increases our appetite for information, and we cannot switch off our brains after working hours. Like at a power plant where the turbines cannot be turned off because returning to peak operating efficiency would take two days, we maintain our mental equipment in the stand-by position (including sleeping-time, i.e. dreams) for ready access.

Consuming information means consequently lower perception and improper perception of information. This improper reading could lead to consuming of incorrect information. Note the famous mistakes in describing history such as the legend about founders of the city of Rome, Romulus and Remus. They weren't suckled by real animal wolves "lupa". "Lupa" was at that time nickname for a prostitute. A bordello was called "lupanar". And the stepmother of these two founders of Rome made very good money in the bordello, they say, that she was able to buy to her stepsons enough land to establish the eternal city. Regardless of these fact completely false legend about wolf-mother is still good selling story.

The allure of stories, removed from our everyday life and real facts, is immemorial. Remember, what we can find in ruins in the never-finished Citadel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: "Sure, you said about sons how one grows up and the other is sick, and you spoke about house, but not very urgently. And you start to live when some traveller from a distant caravan unfolds mysteries, speaking about white elephants, this and that prince, and about the marriage of a woman thousands of miles away whose name you hardly knew. Or about the movement of enemies. Or, about some comet, offence, love or courage in the face of death, or about some hate against you, or about big worries. You were suddenly full of space and connected with many things and your tent -- loved and hated, threatened and saved -- gained immediate meaning. And you were in captivity to a miraculous web, which also changed you to something more spacious than you were before..." This is the secret of literature.

Talk, which puts us in touch with a thousand other things, makes us an inextricable part of the overall human construction. Never completed, always threatened with collapse. And each part depends on human individuality, that's why it is so fragile. Talk of a story is usually more interesting than experiencing the story in real life. That's why some stories are so strong that they become immortal epics and legends. And pilot of long-distance post-lines Saint-Exupéry proved that these great stories pull us away from the banalities of everyday life and our surroundings.

Third conclusion:
The non-fiction offers higher concentration of information, unlike to other forms of literature.

(to be continued)

IS FICTION DEAD? II

IS FICTION DEAD?

(PART II)

The Poetry of Information

Visual media - best feed for that beast?

Media can, and sometimes do exploit this reflex in commercials, video clips and movies. (Consider how many commercials contain movement? Action is eye-catching, even if the viewer is not consciously interested in watching). Many American movies -- such as horror films and action movies -- take advantage of this reflex. The fast action rivets the audience's attention.

What is the outcome of such movies? For two hours our brain are under fast-changing pressure from new impulses. Most of this time we are tense, sometimes under stress. Finally, we realize that all this is only a game, and we feel a sense of release or relief. The experience is, of course, training for us if such situations, God forbid, ever occur. Compared with films, however uncomplicated, the permanent stream of information from, let us say, 30 television channels is more alluring and an easier source for consuming information. Here, again and again, appears a provocative demarcation between peace and conflict -- your immediate environment and the action on the screen. Genetically coded reflexes for evaluating information connect us with primitive, historical man. It helped our forefathers stay alive, while for us it is hypertrophic appendage, which we generally can't use. Likewise, our musculature, which we use mainly for sitting in the comfortable environment of post-industrial civilization. How we must push ourselves to train our muscles in fitness centers, the same way we use mental "jogging" every night in front of our television set. And with complete pleasure. An important question is if television -- window to the world, forming our illusions of dramatic events and emotions while we immutably sit in the chair -- isn't an inevitable "biological" need of contemporary society? Our forefathers had somewhere to expend their energies; they had, no doubt, a larger physical space for motion. For us, it is mostly in the evening and in cities in a living room (surely quite little) that we have space for our existence. If we are not fascinated by the illusion of televisual events, not frozen by them, where can we (and moreover our kids!) expend our yearning for motion? Instead, we can only collide with one another within our four walls! Notice how many people, in very little space, are able to sit motionless for many hours, for example at the cinema. If we cancel the film and leave them in the same space, in a moment comes a crisis from distress. And our living room and television, is our home cinema. To intrigue against television -- the easy-sleazy intellectual Crusade against the slippers culture -- means these critics are unable to be aware of all the implications. Previous times the space for mental escape were books and fiction created another worlds as an asylum for dreamers.

Second conclusion: In their spare time people do not want to be informed; they want to consume information.
This need for information persist to our later age and is probably a reason of pre-mortality of some individuals, who as elderly lose their communication channels, e.g. minimal daily-dose of information.

(to be continued)

IS FICTION DEAD? I

IS FICTION DEAD?

(PART I)

The Poetry of Information

In article about their creative writing program (Valley News, July 23, 1998) students in Iowa (America's oldest and most prestigious academic writers' workshop) remember well Jane Dystel, a literary agent based in New York City, who was brave enough to had "hard-edged, almost cynical" discussion with them stressing that "non-fiction sells better than fiction." For the majority of young writers, in Dystel's opinion, nonfiction offers a more direct (not to mention a more profitable) way of connecting with readers and publishers than fiction.

Does this pronouncement indicate that fiction is dead, or that, in a world absorbed with here-and-now issues, people no longer have time for works of the imagination? If so, who is to blame, and for what?

What is a non-fiction, and why has it become so popular? Non-fiction didn't just appear overnight. Even that most fundamental text of Western culture, the Bible, is still revered by many as a literal biography of God, and thus may be seen, in its original conception anyway, as the first work of "non-fiction." Perhaps the question we should ask is: Why do people need stories fulfilled by real facts? Is it possible that humans have always possessed a biological need for information, a need for which our "information age" serves as a kind of hothouse? If such an idea seems simplistic, it may nevertheless be worth investigating whether biology (when philosophy is silent in this matter) can account for the failure of fiction to hold our interest in today's world.

Myths, legends and fairy tales are the basis of our culture's intellectual heritage, and the origin of our imaginative literature. Long before moveable type was heard of, parents told their children stories to make them sleep better, but also to install in the software of their tender minds basic "data" about good and evil. By repeating the old stories from one generation to the next, down through the ages our foreparents installed the archetypal "icons" on the "desktop" of our minds. Our genetic heritage provides us with basic software, but specific "applications" such as moral and aesthetic values may be "accessed" only during childhood and especially so called "insealing period". This sense of values originally came to us through stories.

Even as adults, we need fairy tales to revamp our mental software. In response to our rapidly accelerating need for information, these ancient stories are nowadays put more and more to the task of making sense of our hi-tech, high-stress, hyperpoliticized modern milieu. As an outgrowth of proliferating scientific knowledge, science-fiction first appeared as a rapidly emerging and growing literary form in the second half of 20-th century, but as a popular genre it endured only briefly, for most science fiction was ultimately perceived as fanciful excursions into imaginary landscapes, most often taking place in far-flung galaxies, with no "practical" application to "real life."

On the other hand, such fanciful epics as Steven Spielberg's movie, E.T., offered a novelty to our thinking about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Before, we had only two options: 1. We are alone in space; 2. We are not alone, and moreover whoever else is out there is probably strange, hideous, and malevolent. Spielberg's message was that we are not alone, but that E.T.´s are just as good as toys for our kids. This kind of information is a great healing for all of us under permanent threat about violence and disasters rolling on us daily from a whole spectra of media.
The sci-fi movement gradually abandoned its "scientific" novelty in favor of components that are popularly recognized as "fantasy". This is likewise a dead end, but may serve as a point of departure for contemporary non-fiction, which tend to change a form too - for a creative non-fiction. We have noted that non-fiction is as old as the Bible, so why is it so popular now? Why does it attract us as readers as well as biological beings? The answer is information. Unlike species ruled by instinct, the human animal must constantly adapt to his environment by seeking information. Information was an essential part of our survival in the past, and remains as much a biological necessity as ever.

Why is information so essential? Literature is a forever incomplete self-portrait of humanity, an idea refined by each new generation of writers. Yet, despite the relentless activity of our publishing industry, and the fully-stocked "fiction"-sections at our bookstores and libraries, the reader's biological imperative to master his environment through information is seldom addressed in the context of "literature," as if our quest to learn from what we read expressed only an occasional wish for romantic escape, a frivolous journey among antennaed space aliens or Hyperborean heroes. But are not both the creators and consumers of literature biologically programmed to use what they know? How, after all, has humanity been able to dominate Nature, if not by its biological drive to acquire information? What has been our greatest advantage in the battle against larger predators, if not our ability to seek and preserve information, and to use it judiciously?

The Battle of Midway is a more recent, if perhaps unlikely example of what I mean by our biological imperative for information. In June 1942, the United States had nearly lost to the Japanese in the Pacific. But America had one formidable weapon -- its intelligence service. Through its Office of Special Services (OSS), the Americans learned precisely where, when, and how many Japanese units were likely to fight for possession of Midway Island. The U.S. Navy's victory at Midway marked a decisive turning point in the war with Japan.

First conclusion: Search for information is one of our basic evolutionary reflexes to events that could affect our lives. Now, this information is at a further and further distance from us (look at the Midway from the point of view of the U.S. mainland), and yet we are increasingly interested in reading about it and to having reliable facts about them at our fingertips. Our need for information is conditioned by a basic evolutionary reflex to assert control over our surroundings. We reflexively check everything new that comes our way in order to decide how to react to potential disturbances. Each individual instinctively reacts to any disturbance in one of two ways: fight or flight. In the past, this reflex enabled human beings to survive, and remains an indispensable part of our mental equipment. Language puts us in touch with our world, and makes us an inextricable part of it. From that time we are not only human beings, we are forever "human information beings".

(to be continued)

LITERATURE OF SMALL NATIONS IN EU

WHAT FORTUNE LITERATURE OF SMALL NATIONS

MAY EXPECT FROM EUROPEAN UNION?

Essay by Gustáv Murín

In these days I use to recall the times when in every corner we had slogan saying: "With Soviet Union forever!" Maybe it is why I am (in contrary to some others who had very probably never any problem with previous slogan) so reluctant to call these days so enthusiastically "With European Union forever!". However different are these unions I feel that criticism is only way how to adopt any big idea with certain dignity. Especially when I have my personal experience with European Commission and its support of literature. And literature is a topics we would to talk about here and now.

First problem of grant system supporting financially literature in European Union (such like Culture 2000 where I was engaged as an expert of selection committee) is its enormous bureaucracy. Well, if someone is chosen as bureaucrat out of ten thousand other candidates , and than well paid, he or she naturally want to show us their "skillfulness". Therefore application forms looks much more like puzzle than normal document. And supplements required are numerous. And again, naturally, this steeple chase over bureaucratic traps is able to survive only strong subject. And who they are? Writers, poets, literary critics or enthusiastic editors and publishers? Of course not! Only another bureaucrats can manage this hard trace and, again naturally, there are big and well funded publishing houses who are paying to whole bunch of their bureaucrats to succeed in applications for grant of EC. Bureaucrats of EC call the previous "red rats", but how we may call bureaucrats of EC who made all these troubles out of nothing?
It is fairly possible that some real fanatics of literature with all their must succeed to jump over this first obstacle. Well, than they will face second one. Bureaucrats of Brussels really do not like a small boys, lonely enthusiasts. Thus, you can apply for EC support only with BIG project. In terms of translation of books from one EU language to another you have to have at least TEN books project in the same time. With all agreements from authors and their agents, and with capacity to make it all from editing to printing and distribution. The lonely publisher who like very much particular author and would to publish only his book is ultimate looser. And in this moment you may recall well know paradox of capitalism that only strong ones become stronger, and week one will simple vanish. So, who may succeed - red rats (with "projects" like translation and publication of Agatha Christie in Greece), of course! Do you wonder why?

Well, do not let us to be entirely pessimistic. There are always some publishers who (with great sympathy of members of selective committee, who are also mostly enthusiasts) may obtain grant from EC. And well, just there will start their real troubles. All those previous struggles were just in theoretical level, now comes real ones. It is because EC grants are, by regulations, covering just a half of expenses and these you have to pay first by yourself. And than to wait for months for reimbursement. Same it is for literary conferences or any other activities alike. And believe me, you will hate the day you ever become so foolish to start all this circus with EC "support". It is because it may last not only months when you will see promised funds and this all only in case that everything is perfect in eyes of EC bureaucrats. And it is no often so. Not because you wouldn't like to be perfect, but because also EC bureaucrats are just humans. It means not really perfect. And thus by small mistake or formal obstacle you may never see your money again. That's life - and as we already know in this life only those strong will survive. Let's call them red rats, for example.

If we all talking about the fortune of literature of small nations in a unifying Europe it is better to be very realistic. In newly unified Europe only domestic sources for support of literature will really help. It is so simply - more independent we will be from bureaucrats in Brussels, more happy we will be in EU.

Virus as a Principle

Virus as a Principle

Science defines a virus as the smallest and simplest form of life. Without its own enzyme system a natural virus is reliant on a parasitic way of life. As such, the pathogenity of a great number of known viruses is just a logical consequence. They master the nucleus of the host cell with their genetic information and force it to produce up to a hundred thousand copies of the initial virus. The result usually being the disintegration of the host cell, release of the newly created viruses into the surroundings and the repetition of the whole cycle. From a human point of view the existence of primary viruses in nature is an oversight in the Creator´s grand plan. Without them the world would be much safer - and, most importantly, much clearer. It seems that they are here so that we have something to fight when we manage things that are visible, recognizable and thus defeatable. Viruses in nature could also be interpreted as an annoying, yet often deadly redundancy worsening our lives regardless of our intervention. And now let us consider that we, being rational creatures, have succeeded in creating our own world in this century. It is a world of computer programs. A world that is only dependent on our best resolutions. And as soon as we created this world, the virus appeared too! But this one is not supplied from somewhere just to annoy us. On the contrary, it is our product! We can put an exception into the world of our rules straight away, deadly viruses of our own production! And such that they can reversibly destroy the results of our computer work or, lately, the computers themselves. This time it is not nature that is against us, it is just ourselves! It is a uniquely clean experiment that did not work out. Or vice versa - it did work out, as evidence of anxiety that any world without viruses and parasites generally would be imperfect?!

Written by Gustáv Murín

Translated by Viktor Pomichal