Interruptus I: Viruses of the mind

A small change. It isn’t easy to draw several comic strips during the week to upload, so I am going to introduce a modification: I will insert text entries with the strips and vice versa. I’ll try to leave the comic strips for the same topics, and with the text entries I’ll include other subjects, beginning with this one about viruses of the mind.

A few time ago I took up again my curiosity about memetic and all those things related to memes. So, in addition to buy a good book about the topic, I was searching and reading through the web. And I found, amongst other things, with an amazing paper by Richard Dawkins (el del The Selfish Gene), what gives the tittle to the present entry: "Viruses of the mind". It is not a recent work, dating from 1991, but I was surprised about its relevance. The main idea is that, similarly to what happens with genes and living organisms, our brain acts as a machine for the transmission of memes, like computers, books and any other device for storing and transmitting information do. But again, as it is the case with computers, not all the transmitted and/or stored information is useful for the receptacle (our brain). Sometimes such information could even be harmful. Like a computer virus.

Through the paper, Dawkins makes comparisons and give examples about all these things. And he explains how these viruses of the mind can be studied using epidemiology. But what I’ve found really interesting is how Dawkins develops a hypothetical medical text describing the symptoms of a person infected by viruses of the mind:

1. The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as ”faith”.

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2. Patients typically make a positive virtue of faith's being strong and unshakable, in spite of not being based upon evidence. Indeed, they may feel that the less evidence there is, the more virtuous the belief.

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3. A related symptom, which a faith-sufferer may also present, is the conviction that "mystery", per se, is a good thing. It is not a virtue to solve mysteries. Rather we should enjoy them, even revel in their insolubility.

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4. The sufferer may find himself behaving intolerantly towards vectors of rival faiths, in extreme cases even killing them or advocating their deaths. He may be similarly violent in his disposition towards apostates (people who once held the faith but have renounced it); or towards heretics (people who espouse a different - often, perhaps significantly, only very slightly different - version of the faith). He may also feel hostile towards other modes of thought that are potentially inimical to his faith, such as the method of scientific reason which may function rather like a piece of anti-viral software.

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5. The patient may notice that the particular convictions that he holds, while having nothing to do with evidence, do seem to owe a great deal to epidemiology. Why, he may wonder, do I hold this set of convictions rather than that set? Is it because I surveyed all the world's faiths and chose the one whose claims seemed most convincing? Almost certainly not. If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. [...]Epidemiology, not evidence.

6. If the patient is one of the rare exceptions who follows a different religion from his parents, the explanation may still be epidemiological. To be sure, it is possible that he dispassionately surveyed the world's faiths and chose the most convincing one. But it is statistically more probable that he has been exposed to a particularly potent infective agent - a John Wesley, a Jim Jones or a St. Paul. Here we are talking about horizontal transmission, as in measles. [...]

7. The internal sensations of the patient may be startlingly reminiscent of those more ordinarily associated with sexual love. This is an extremely potent force in the brain, and it is not surprising that some viruses have evolved to exploit it. St. Teresa of Avila's famously orgasmic vision is too notorious to need quoting again. [...]

And now, I leave you to thoroughly examine your surrounding brains in the search of a healthy one...