https://medium.com/ill-ixi-lli/kill-the-messenger-55afdc10b309

“In our bodies there are cells, part of the immune system, called macrophages. Their activities are complex. One of them is to ‘engulf’ a threat that has been identified as ‘non-self’. When they do this, other cells ‘read a profile of the threat’ from the surface of the mPhage. These cells then assist in the engineering of molecular ‘responses’ that can disable the invading element or dissolve it.

What we are doing is, comparatively, insane: when a macrophage (one of us, a human being) has ‘acquired the non-self threat’ and begins to signal, we mistake the signaller for the threat. And we attack and ‘punish’ the signaller, all the while doing nothing at all about the threats — which are the toxic social, relational, informational and ecological forces that produce both the necessity of the signal and the messenger.

If our bodies did something like we do even one time we would not survive it. The response would fail to address anything even vaguely resembling the threat (thus producing more of it), and … the moment our immune systems attacked our macrophages? We would explode. Literally. Boom. Pus everywhere.

What we are doing is the biological equivalent of an autoimmune disease, we are attacking the organs of our social ecologies that, under extreme stress, compression, and constant assault, finally have to signal desperately about what they were doing nothing but signalling about for years: the entire context has turned to poison, and since everyone is conveniently complicit in this ongoing catastrophe no one is inclined to notice. The few signals that reach the surface are assaulted, denigrated, raped, killed or imprisoned.”

https://medium.com/ill-ixi-lli/kill-the-messenger-55afdc10b309