by John Cryan

When I was a kid breeding exotic giant silkmoths from all over the world, I found out among the true obsessives in the business (yes, there was an active, and at that time wholly unregulated, global trade in

the biggest and most spectacular; little Buck Moths generally weren’t part of this) that the most special were ‘sports’ known as gynandromorphs, or mixes of male and female. There were two types of these, bilateral and mosaic. Both were prized by collectors. Back then the money was small, but bragging rights were big (the collectors were invariably male, weirdly generous but competitive at the same time). Commercial collecting later mushroomed into a really big problem, and not just for insects.

I moved away from collecting and into live study when I was still quite young. A synoptic (one of each) collection was good enough for me to get started. But I kept the gynandromorphs I accidentally bred. The bilaterals (half male, half female, split down the center) were obvious; the mosaics (all mixed up) less so. Both were rare, and you had to do a lot of breeding to produce one. Once someone gave me an old Polyphemus Moth caught in the wild that was a perfect bilateral gynandromorph.

Even as a kid, it was clear these freaks of nature came from what were then called ‘random’ mutations. The sci fi and comics of the day were obsessed with mutations; after all, it was the Atomic Age and the Cold War and the Space Age put together. I wondered if people ever came that way, not just aliens.

Turns out they do. We do. Every last one of us. Not so much bilateral (although it happens), and not restricted just to gender characteristics, but mosaicked in more ways than anyone has imagined.

Not only that, but we and our cells become more mosaicked as we get older. Much more.

And when we get sick, more mosaicked yet. This is the chaonic key to a universal theory of disease.

There is a continuum of genetic, and epigenetic, divergence, or if you will, diversity, in the cells of our bodies that starts off relatively low at conception, explodes in the womb, and continues to expand after birth as we grow, mature, and decline. It is powered in part, especially later, by continuous alterations of our DNA, RNA, and other cellular molecules and processes by free chaonic pressure, or gravity. Luckily, most of these constantly occurring alterations only affect one cell at a time. And our immune and internal cell sanitation systems get rid of many of these changed cells, but not all.

There also is a whole ecosystem of organisms composed of very different cells that inhabit our bodies and interact with, and often facilitate, the work of our own cells to keep us alive and functioning. We generally call these our ‘microfauna.’ Most of them are single-celled organisms, but not all. The ones that interfere with our health we call ‘infections,’ ‘diseases,’ ‘conditions,’ and ‘parasites,’ among other bad (the third one is euphemistically bad) words. All of these also can chaonically mosaic as they age, but many of them don’t live long enough to show it. We humans do. And as our life spans have lengthened over the last few centuries (human bodies originally evolved to last no more than 45 years or so, and in many early cultures often didn’t even make 30, or just long enough to successfully reproduce, due primarily to the unchecked action of diseases), our bodies have had the chance through increased free chaonic exposure to mosaic more and more, and therefore become more and more susceptible to new kinds of infections, diseases, conditions and parasites we never heard of, to the point that now there are more than one hundred thousand official medical diagnoses for all these. Imagine if you had as a doctor or nurse in training to memorize all of them! Luckily we have linked computers to do that and help our health care providers along, one of the good things people have done with the internet.

So the in-soma mosaicism briefly mentioned on P. 21 of Moths of the Past as a free chaonic effect, is critically important to the medical arts. It forms the underlying basis for a universal theory of disease. And that theory, in turn, gives hope we can open up some of medicine’s most intractable black boxes.

The most important thing is to understand what makes this theory universal. And that is mosaicism is actually what kills us, in all instances save sudden chaotic events, all of which also have at least some free chaonic causes behind them. Mosaicism is how free chaons slowly (and sometimes fairly quickly) turn living things into dead things. Universally. Throughout Nature here on Earth, and on every other living planet in the Universe.

It is how free chaonic-driven mosaicism does it that varies, along continua, of course. Because of that variation, each of us does not know for sure what will get us in the end, never mind when.

The luckiest among us get to die of ‘old age.’ What that means is none of the hundred thousand-plus diagnosed ailments get us, and neither do chaotic inadvertencies. Instead, what happens is our cells diverge enough due to accumulated chaonically-induced mosaic effects that they no longer can function together as one organism. When that occurs, we are pronounced dead. All of our soma may not be dead for this to happen (cf. ‘brain death,’ e. g.), but the rest of our cells usually follow pretty quickly.

If we are able to avoid the twin pitfalls of active chaos and free-chaonic peril long enough, we become ‘super-agers.’ Centenarians officially fall into this category. Yes, a fair amount of luck is required, but also something aviators in war often do, called ‘flying at treetop level.’ One does this to ‘fly under the radar.’ Centenarians achieve extreme longevity by avoiding most of life’s easy-end pitfalls. They stay out of trouble, live modestly, eat properly, stay active and engaged, and don’t squander wealth or energy. And, perhaps most importantly, they always have at least one ‘wingman’ or ‘-woman,’ or someone in between, or even outside the binary, or even the human. For the rest of us, life’s more precarious. Our death certificates will invariably state a medical cause. A cause tied to more specific mosaic effects. Namely, one or more of the aforementioned diagnoses.

So let’s look at a few of these. Cancer, for instance, perhaps the most terrifying class.

Cancer happens because cells grow out of control, sapping the body’s energy while giving nothing back. Instead of doing their function, they reproduce wildly, perpetuating their altered genetic states. And what altered their genes to begin with? Sometimes foreign chemicals, or radiation, but most often free-chaonic action, or the pressure of gravity on molecular, atomic and subatomic particles and bonds.

Why are there different kinds of cancer? Because there are many different kinds of cells in a body to begin with, due to so-called ‘controlled’ differentiation. Within that, certain genes, or configurations of atoms as molecules, are more susceptible to free-chaonic alteration in specific ways than others.

What about metastasis? Well, those cancer cells have evolved that way, inside the body, in much the same manner as backdoor Convolution presents in the environment at large. That’s because each body, or soma, is its own ecosystem, a microcosm of the larger biosphere surrounding and interpenetrating it. That systemic leakiness is what gives the newly mutated cancer cells the ability to not only multiply and mutate more, but move around inside the body. The same leakiness allows genes to move from body to body in the great outdoors, as well as from cell to cell and even within cells inside our bodies.

Convolution is constantly occurring inside our bodies, not just ‘out there’ in the wider world outside the soma, or vessel, that carries us through life. The Epigenetic Triangle holds sway inside of us, and the Metamorphic Triangle, and the Symbiotic Triangle. Our bodies are in fact limited forms of ecosystems.

The limitations are due to the fact that unlike outside ecosystems, or the environment or biosphere at large, our bodies are collections of cells tightly enough tied together by controlling mechanisms that the fates of all the cells in the system are linked in a manner more susceptible to system extinction, or body biodiversity crash, otherwise known as death. Ecological systems are not. It takes more to kill them. But we’re getting close to becoming certified expert ecosystem assassins now, progressing to whole biospheres, so I should shut up before Death Star III shows up.

If our bodies are ecosystems, the entire Biologic Triangle applies to what goes on inside, as well as outside, our only Earthly vessels. We make our voyage here in the temporal sphere as many. We are never alone in our travels. Or in repose. Because of that fact, and the constant presence of free chaons inside and outside us, we are always subject to chaos. But chaos produces good as well as bad results.

In addition to producing all the bad D-words, Chaos produces Diversity. Variety, The Spice of Life.

That diversity is key to understanding the paradox that is disease, and why mosaicking is central to it.

And the best way is to look past the Emperor of all Maladies, to the truly supreme black box of medicine, the hijacking of our defenses to attack us. Autoimmune disorders.

Before we do this, we need to explore exactly what mosaicking is, and what the immune system is. Then we need to show the convoluted paradox of their relationship, or how they affect each other.

Continuously, of course. As one inextricably linked order-chaos system. As are all systems throughout the Universe.

Cancers come from mutated cells that have escaped the immune system. They go largely undetected, and unpunished, or at best inadequately punished, as they furiously multiply with impunity. One of the body’s major internal control systems has failed. As the out-of-control cells multiply, they continue to mutate. The free chaons are clearly in charge here. They are pressing hard on certain chemical bonds that are sure to give, more sure than in regular (non-cancer) cells, and, at the same time, selecting for the future mutations. At some point, if we can figure out ways to continuously genetically biopsy patients’ individual cells (and ultimately for all important dynamic constituents, not just DNA), or tiny clusters of presumably more or less identical cells, without serious harm, we will come to see which bonds are weakest, and patterns of sequential free chaonic exploitation of these relative weaknesses.

As explained earlier, mosaicking involves much more than mere DNA. Any aspect of a cell’s chemical structure and function, and therefore behavior, can become mosaicked by free-chaonic interference. This interference goes on constantly. It is like being in an aircraft under constant attack. Eventually things start to deteriorate as the hits pile up. Mosaicking, in other words, is change, mostly deleterious in a self-controlled, semi-independent entity such as an aircraft or organism. It is a form of devolution.

Enough hits, and the aircraft, or organism, crashes. With cancer, the paradox is self-replicating hits.

Now, the immune system. It has evolved, and diversified, to detect and destroy ‘alien,’ or ‘bad,’ cells that are inside the soma. It does this through numerous biochemical pathways and mechanisms, more diverse, or evolved, or in Convolution terms, compound-composited, in more ‘advanced’ organisms, those with long heritages and lots of compound-compositing Convolution events in their histories. They also tend to be longer-lived members of the animal kingdom. If one expands on the notion of an immune system to include other forms of chemical defense (a perfectly valid thing to do using mock-continuous thought), then many plants have immune systems, and so do many fungi, and even single-celled organisms. One can carry this continuum to its logical endpoints by saying all living things practice biochemical warfare for self-defense, and biochemical peace and love to continue forward.

So what’s a ‘bad’ cell? One that doesn’t fit into the somatic order. Platonism rules the immune system.

But if there are no perfect Platonic Forms in the temporal plane, how’s a poor ‘defender’ cell to tell?

Free-chaonically driven mosaicking turns ‘good’ cells into ‘bad’ ones. Even if they’re not so bad (meaning disfunctional or dangerous), just different. Often just older. This is the cause of autoimmune disorders and the tremendous, often absolutely excruciating, pain and suffering they inflict. The natural mosaicking of aging turns the body’s own immune system selectively against itself.

To make things even worse, women are hit much harder by many immune disorders than men. Their systems are more complex and multifunctional, and therefore subject to more varieties of mosaicking.

The Paradox of Platonism is that in the world we inhabit while alive, Nature strives for as close to perfection as possible by constantly renewing itself. But because it is never achieved in full, neither is perfect Order. The ‘Forms’ never fully form. This, of course, is due to the constant presence and interference of free chaons, those architects of increasing disorder surrounding and infiltrating everything and everyone. So Nature settles for living with imperfection. One of the ways this is done is through the immune system. Others include various maintenance and repair functions found throughout Nature. In us, a few of the most obvious are blood clotting and scar tissue formation after injury, followed by less showy internal wound healing through self-reconstruction at the cellular level.

With the immune system, we have learned to ‘trick it out’ using vaccines, to prime it for better fighting off infections we social animals know will be coming or are already here. This strategy saved many from death by Covid, and many more over the past century from many other dread infectious diseases. Recently also, we have begun to ‘teach’ our immune systems to recognize certain cancer cells whose genetic differences we’ve sussed out with enough regularity to present a consistent target for immune cells to attack. The results have been promising, but limited to certain cancers, like those of the blood, more susceptible to rapid and targeted immune response. They also have been disappointing for many patients, most likely because the tuned-up immune agents were narrowly targeted, and the cancer’s mosaicking has moved on under the relentless pressure of the free chaons that live inside us all.

In autoimmune conditions, the problem is reversed. Instead of failing to react to rogue cells turned alien attackers that can kill us, our immune system over-reacts to our aging cells that have not gone rogue, but have been changed by the same free chaons that initiate cancers. By attacking these cells guilty of nothing more than aging, chaons have presented modern medicine with a quandary: how to deprogram the immune system from attacking the body it evolved to defend. Deprogram too much, or in the wrong way, and you open the patient to a Pandora’s Box of deadly afflictions held at bay by that same immune system. This is the Paradox of Medicine: trying to fix the plane while it is still flying.

Finally, there is the universe of problems involving ‘mind over matter,’ i.e., trauma, the permanently hurtful end of the continuum of stress. Trauma is a precipitator of many common mental ailments not caused by a combination of inherited genetic and later free-chaonic action. The brain being the most complex (and therefore vulnerable) organ in the body – seat of mind, and organizing principle of bodily functions – its deterioration through mosaicking has been little studied beyond gross chemical changes related to dementia. We all face stressors less fundamental than free chaons, but must keep in our same besieged minds the fact that all of them, every last stress agent, devolves to a common chaonic origin.

We need to turn medicine into a study of cellular mosaicking and its fundamental causes and effects. And that, in turn, means turning to the Chaon-Convolution Theory for answers to progress medicine.