There is a complex set of Venn Diagrams here. Imagine these diagrams in animation, and we see that our relationship with - views and experiences of - disease evolves with the times. It is never static. It breathes and pulses as much as each of us does.
At heart of my Algorithm for Disease is the notion that we are engaged - humankind and disease - in a elemental, aeons-old battle for life. We as a life form grew our intelligence over hundreds of thousands of years, and we forged the tools with which to defeat disease. But let us not underestimate the smarts and means that disease has at its disposal. So one reason we fear being overcome by an epidemic or pandemic of disease is, as `The Body Snatchers suggests, it seems to know perfectly well how to attack us.
What's more, we as the human race seem intent on battling ourselves, and ultimately destroying our very own, via those smarts and means of disease. In recent months, for example, as the war crisis in Syria rages on, there were allegations that its government used bioterrorism against its own people.
It's very insightful to say that Jack Finney's classic novel has Shakespearean mobility. For me, it's less about their work per se, brilliant as it all is, and more about the novelist and playwright themselves. They clearly had a pulse on the very nature, the very essence, the very dynamic of humankind. Which makes their so-called mobility all the more remarkable, yet all the less surprising, because their work simply follows suit with the evolution of humankind.
Note: In the DVD for `The Invasion (2007), the fourth film adaptation of the classic Jack Finney novel `The Body Snatchers, We've Been Snatched Before is a feature program. I couldn't find an upload of it on YouTube, so the next best thing, I thought, was to capture this thought-provoking program via the foregoing screen shots.
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