Everything in Excess is Opposed to Nature

One major factor driving COVID’s deadliness has been staring us in the face since the outset. Few have been willing to name or report it. Fewer still have paid attention to those who did. If we continue to ignore it, things will only get worse.

Anthony Fieldman
11 min readJan 15, 2022
At MoMA © Anthony Fieldman 2021

Hippocrates—the “Father of Medicine”—literally founded the practice, including the use of prognosis, clinical observation and the systematic categorization of diseases. He famously observed—correctly—that “Everything in excess is opposed to nature.”

With his insight, he was pointing us toward one of Nature’s two most enduring features: that its closed-loop, zero-waste, efficiency-driven ecosystem allows for no excess. Rather, it is in constant motion, endlessly transforming, rebalancing and restoring equilibrium to its myriad constituent parts, at every scale.

Everything that Nature has produced—humans included—is hard-wired to maintain this state of innate balance. Countless evolutionary tools, most of which remain a mystery to us, exist for no reason other than to ensure our continued foundational health.

Here are just a few miracles in the human body that we do understand:

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Anthony Fieldman

Architect | Photographer | Writer | Philosopher | Polyglot | Windmill Jouster | Nomade Civilisée