Viruses of the mind
Guest post as written by Infidel753 and taken from his Blog of the same name.
Infidel753: Viruses of the mind, Infidel753 Blog
Viruses are the simplest of all living things. Indeed, it’s questionable whether they should be considered “living” at all. A virus does not eat, breathe, digest, or perform any other of the organic functions of such true organisms as animals, plants, or bacteria. It consists of a string of DNA (or, in the case of retroviruses, RNA) within a protein shell. It cannot even reproduce without a host cell to parasitically exploit. Once inside the host cell, the virus DNA insinuates itself into the cell’s own DNA, and diverts the functioning of the cell’s internal machinery to produce copies of the virus. A virus is not so much a living thing as a packet of pure information — including instructions for replicating itself, and for modifying the behavior of the host organism in ways which will spread the virus (coughing, sneezing, etc).
Computer “viruses” work in much the same way and are thus aptly named. A computer virus is not even a material object but a series of electronic codes — again, it is a packet of pure information, usually including instructions which force the host computer to create new copies of the virus and spread them to other computers, just as a conventional virus uses a living host cell.
DNA and the systems which transcribe it, and electronic computers, are both information-processing systems. Viruses are parasites, entities composed of information rather than flesh and blood, which exploit such systems. As with conventional parasitism, this process usually inflicts substantial harmful effects upon the host cell or host computer, whose internal systems are perverted away from their normal functions to serve the aim of virus replication and spread.
The human mind is also an information-processing system. And it too has its viruses.
Consider religion, especially proselytizing religion. When this virus infects a human mind, it perverts the workings of that mind away from its normal function as part of that human’s system for maintaining a happy, satisfying life. Healthy sexual feelings are re-interpreted as “sin”. Irrational beliefs and bizarre, self-sacrificing behavior develop as the instructions from the invading ideological virus override natural mental processes. Like a cell which ruins itself by creating countless copies of the virus that infected it, and spreading them to other cells, the human whose mind is “infected” with a proselytizing religion often becomes fanatically dedicated to spreading the infection to others, even at the expense of his own safety and well-being. He becomes a host, a tool for the information parasite, serving the purpose of its spread rather than the advancement of his own natural desires.
Several such mind-viruses — Christianity, Islam, fascism, Marxism — have evolved and spread successfully. Some human minds afflicted with these information parasites develop only mild cases (natural immunity due to better education or higher intelligence, perhaps), while others soon progress to the full-blown “fanatic” stage in which the virus is most effectively spread.
A broad education, including knowledge of science and critical thinking and exposure to a wide range of ideas, is the best “vaccine” we have against such mental viruses. Another defense is social environments hostile to their spread — the equivalent of public sanitation, which discourages the spread of conventional diseases. In this case, the protective social environment is one of cultural pluralism. Exposure to a wide range of cultures and ideas tends to render a human mind less susceptible to being completely taken over by any single idea (even if the variegated idea systems are all religious ones, the effect can still work). This does not mean that multiple cultures must be physically present. Japan is very mono-cultural by Western standards, but its people are constantly exposed to other cultures via the media, film and TV, the internet, etc.
Over the last couple of centuries, improved hygiene, vaccines, and other medical innovations have massively reduced the threat posed by infectious disease — to the point where diseases like AIDS or covid, which probably would have passed literally unnoticed any time before 1800, now register to us as major threats because the epidemic diseases that once routinely killed 10% to 20% of whole populations at a time are mostly under control or even effectively extinct. Rising levels of religious non-belief in Europe, the US, Latin America, and even the Middle East show that we’re making similar progress against mind-viruses. It is still hard to imagine a world without religion, but a few generations ago it would have been hard to imagine a world without smallpox. We can do this.
Forgive the criticism, but I find the essay both trivial and offensive.
(1) The correct word for “mental viruses” is “meme”, coined in the 1970s by Richard Dawkins. There’s a whole science for this already, and it’d be worth consulting more of it before ranting about the evils of religious beliefs.
(2) Not all viruses and bacteria are bad for humans, and neither are all religions. Similarly, in most cases a viral or bacterial infection isn’t much of a problem for a person, and neither are religious beliefs. Most people are moderate by nature.
(3) A strong case can be made that most people need to have belief systems of some type (religious or otherwise – how would you characterize the belief systems common in China?), for the same reason we have mental heuristic shortcuts. Most people don’t have the time or energy to think everything through all the time, so moral rules-of-thumb get used.
(3) In most cases throughout history, moderate religious belief is benign, and in many it leads to much better overall behavior for a community. Yes, some beliefs are maladaptive, and most any belief leads to stupid outcomes if taken to extremes. That’s also true of drinking milk, or even water – so what?
(4) Mass hysteria doesn’t require religion. People can go absolutely nuts and extremist without religion, especially if their livelihood or belief-system is threatened. In fact, taken as a whole, the “opiate of the masses” (religion) may in fact have been a stabilizing force historically. Every human creation is vulnerable to corruption, and religion is no exception, but that doesn’t make religion inherently evil.
(5) Today, just because the belief-system most people are following doesn’t have a religious name, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The real problem with humans isn’t their tendency to be infected by false or maladaptive religious memes, but their inability to think critically and cast out false memes of any type.
(5) Regarding infection by false and malevolent memes – I submit that far more evil was done in the world in the past 3 years by mostly-well-intentioned, non-religious, “Science”-believing authoritarians (over-reacting to COVID, global climate change, and everything else), than everything people did to one another from, say, 1970-2019. By the standards of the 1970s-2010s, the world leadership and its propaganda mouthpieces have literally gone insane, hysterical, and far more. Religion, by contrast, has not done nearly so much damage to society as the evisceration of fundamental human rights worldwide.
Neuroscientist explains how religious fundamentalism hijacks the brain
Only the weak minded are susceptible …
Thanks for the link.
A problem to the extent that it threatens our very survival as a nation. One to which much of the reality denial we are seeing is attributable. Thanks, Infidel for saying. Thanks, AB for posting.
“Viruses of the mind…”
This is precisely the analogous way in which Jews were traditionally attacked in Western Europe. Likening a Christian or Muslim or Jew to a virus is impossibly offensive. This was the sort of analogous language that led to the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal and England, that led to the Inquisition and beyond.
@ltr,
Actually, no. Historically, Jews were attacked not because of their religious beliefs per se but because of racism. The Jews were held to be a separate race, just as Blacks, native Americans and Asians were. The Nazis were primarily driven by a desire for “lebensraum,” and the original “final solution” was to deport Eastern European Jewry across the Urals or to Madagascar in order to confiscate the land they lived on.
As for the Spanish Inquisition, that was mostly driven by the need of the RCC to confiscate wealth, which was often in the hands of Jews. Indeed, Judaism is the parent monotheistic faith to Christianity; the teachings of Judaism are embodied in the “Old Testament,” which is considered part of the Christian bible. Jewish religious, cultural and economic life flourished in Spain under Muslim rule.
Follow the money.
“Likening a Christian or Muslim or Jew to a virus is impossibly offensive.”
Indeed it is. I don’t see where the post likens people to viruses. It likens religion, as well as secular beliefs such as Marxism and fascism, to viruses. Like all analogies, it is imperfect.
Exactly. Religious people are not the infection, they are the victims of the infection. The post makes that clear.
Religious people are not the infection, they are the victims of the infection.
[ There are more than a billion Christians and more than a billion Muslims and Hindus. ]
Yes, it’s an infection which afflicts the majority of the humans on Earth, and in earlier centuries afflicted nearly all of us. Nothing surprising or incongruous about that, in context.
@Infidel,
Good, provocative post.
Thank you.
ltr
i agree with you. but we..see my reply to joel below at aug 30, 12:30 p.m.
Thank you, Coberly. However, I could unfortunately find no such reply. Also, I found an important directly related post about prejudice against Native American children had disappeared. This from the New York Times today.
@ltr,
Your comment on prejudice against Native American children, however poignant, was off-topic. The word “prejudice” does not appear in the post. The fact that your comment was from the NYT today doesn’t make it on-topic. Please restrict your comments to the topic of the thread, which is how religions and certain political beliefs are transmitted like viruses. There is at least one “open thread” post each week where you can post your comments about Native American children or other topics that show up in the NYT.
Philosophy, if you agree or not, there is an element beyond logic.
Moral code, and so forth.
Casting any thought as a bug is inconsistent with being human.
However you define that!
Where find wisdom, or do we need more than conclusion from evolve artificial intelligent.
Read Einstein on moral philosophy…..
The closer they get to the Big Bang….
paddy
i am not so sure about “beyond logic.” people whose religion is what they think is science like to accuse people who believe in something called religion are illogical. yet historically religious people have been at least as logical as the anti-religious people. logic does not protect you from error. logic does not even protect you from logical error. there is nothing illogical about believing in, or at least caring about, “things unseen.”
@paddy,
“Casting any thought as a bug is inconsistent with being human.”
I consider hatred of other people based on their race, gender or sexual preference to be a “bug.” YMMV.
Who makes you the judge?
What guides your judgement?
Why judge?
Deepchak Chopra suggests practice
Non Judgment- “Today I shall judge nothing that occurs”
Take care to convict the ‘sin’ and not the ‘sinner’.
@paddy,
What makes me the judge is my humanity. What guides my judgement is the Golden Rule. I judge because without judgement there is only the law of the jungle. I judge slavery and torture, and those who practice them, as unalloyed evils. YMMV.
Who is “Deepchak Chopra” and why should I care what s/he says?
Probably a reference to Deepak Chopra, the prominent “New Age” nutcase. (I hope this isn’t off-topic — I just wanted to respond to your question, since no one else had.)
@Infidel,
Ah, OK. Thanks. It was nobody I ever heard of.
True, yet it leaves major problems in describing what hatred is and isn’t. For example, is thinking and publicly saying that couples of the same sex cannot join together in a sacramental marriage akin to hating such people?
@Eric,
My answer would be “not necessarily.” Whether dogma or hatred, religions have many prohibitions.
I happen to believe that the state should get out of the marriage business and leave it to religion. The state should be able to recognize civil unions, irrespective of gender, for legal purposes.
Eric
I think it is. But as you say, “it leaves a problem.” The Inquisitors thought they were loving people by burning them at the stake to save them from damnation. Or maybe to save us from damnation by contamination. “Logic” will do that to you.
On the other hand, people with PhD’s, and no religion at all, can meet at Wannasee and decide the fate of European Jews and tell themselves they are saving the world from Jewish “disease” and leading the way to a more perfect world ruled by “us superior” people.
What we seem to have today is people who in the name of “Christianity” which they know nothing about, demand policies that are contrary to the explicit teachings of the man they call Christ. and in the name of their “religious freedom” demand that they have a constitutional right to force their “religion” on everyone else. And of course then we have the people who claim in the name of “science” or “reason” * that they have a right to force what they think is “science” on the rest of us…and, of course, “hold in contempt” anyone who does not believe in the religion they call “science,”
it makes the devil laugh.
[disclaimer: “the devil” is a literary figure, a kind of metaphor for the evil that men do. i make no claim that such a “person” actually “exists” whatever that means.]
* “science” and “reason” are not themselves scientific concepts. there is a sort of science called logic which has about as much to do with science as practiced as pure mathematics has to do with auto mechanics.
The Racial Identity of U.S. Jews
Harvard Divinity School – 2018
Immigrants in the US were confronted with nativism, the tribe that impacted my Irish ancestors in New York City prior to the Civil War were Know Nothings.
Nothing prevents us from breeding …
@Ten,
A lethal viral infection certainly would.
@ltr,
What does this have to do with the topic of this post?
@ltr,
What does this have to do with the topic of this post?
Programming note:
Please keep the comments on the topic of this post, and do not engage in personal attacks in your comments. Thanks.
@ltr,
The topic of this thread isn’t prejudice. It is about how religion and other political philosophies can be likened to a virus in the way they are transmitted in a culture or population. The word “prejudice” doesn’t appear in the post. Perhaps you could send the moderators the text of a post on prejudice and Native Americans that could be posted on AB.
Off-topic comments and personal attacks are considered trolling by hijacking the thread. If you think removing off-topic comments and personal attacks is horrid, absurd or appalling, perhaps this isn’t the blog for you.
Joel:
I took it that way also. That is why it is here. As usual Infidel writes an excellent piece.
Re-reading the original post yet again; the post is both trivial and offensive. Considering 1 billion Christians or Muslims or Hindus… as having been subject to an illness, subject to viral infection, subject to “parasitic” infection, is ridiculous and prejudicially offensive.
Specifically re “Rising levels of religious non-belief in Europe, the US, Latin America, and even the Middle East show that we’re making similar progress against mind-viruses.”
On the opposite side, we have Trumpism, and Never-Trumpism, and Trump Derangement Syndrome, and COVID-authoritarianism, and ClimateScare-Authoritarianism, and a whole host of other mind-viruses which one cannot even name without being quite literally censored… possibly spreading unchecked by the sort of humanitarian common sense and ethical guardrails which religion once supplied.
Put another way – you might “cleanse humanity” of “religious mind viruses” in much the way an antibiotic might clear your gut of unwanted bacteria … but if your gut or your mind is then recolonized by an even worse lot, you’re not better off!
@WS,
“COVID-authoritarianism, and ClimateScare-Authoritarianism”
LOL! Those aren’t mind-viruses, those are conspiracy theories.