If you walk around downtown San Francisco right near the X aka Twitter headquarters it’s a zombie apocalypse...It’s rough...you have to see it to believe it...
Elon Musk, interview with Joe Rogan, Oct 31, 2023
You have to say, ‘What philosophy led to that outcome?’ And that philosophy was being piped to Earth. So, uh, you know, a philosophy that would ordinarily be quite niche and geographically constrained – so that the sort of fall out area would be limited – was effectively given an information weapon: An information technology weapon to propagate what is essentially a mind virus to the rest of Earth. And the outcome of that mind virus is very clear if you walk around the streets of downtown San Francisco. It is the end of civilization.”
Throughout history, a certain segment of the human population has always been psychotic. These are the people who abuse and traffic children, who murder and destroy just for fun. But where does this destructive impulse come from?
Musk, in the above quote, seems to think the cause is a mind virus that has been “piped to earth” and that it is a mindset that results in “the end of civilization.” This begs the question, What is evil? It also raises the question, What is a mind virus and where does it come from?
Introduction
In 1976 Richard Dawkins wrote a book titled The Selfish Gene in which he proposed the idea of a meme. Dawkins originally defined the meme as a way to explain how ideas – including irrational ones – spread. He said that a meme “conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” Interestingly, Dawkins himself described the meme (perhaps jokingly) as a mind virus.[1] The meme concept inspired an entirely new area of research called memetics, which tries to explain the transfer of cultural information. The basis for Dawkins’ meme idea is that ideas spread in a mimicry of Darwin’s natural selection process: some ideas are taken up by others and spread, but others die out.
Just as physicist Richard Feynman told us that physicists don’t know what energy is, we do not know how ideas spread, or, really, what an idea is. A materialist might say that an idea is just a specific series of electrochemical responses in the brain, but this is not helpful. A spiritualist might say that an idea is a thought form that originates within the consciousness of an individual. But then we go down the rabbit hole of cognitive science and philosophy, trying to define what consciousness is.
Ephemeral ideas like memes, consciousness, and ideas are not satisfactorily definable in scientific terms because science utterly denies the existence of consciousness separate from the brain (if you doubt this, ask Dawkins!) Let’s just say that ideas, whether irrational or not, spread within the collective consciousness of humanity.
The mind virus
Sociologists tell us that a certain percentage of the human population is anti-social. A cursory look at current events shows that wildly irrational ideas are being propagated throughout human society. For one small example, look at the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) new hiring policy. The FAA is the government agency that manages the airline industry.
From the New York Post:
The Federal Aviation Administration is actively recruiting workers who suffer “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.
“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website states. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
The initiative is part of the FAA’s “Diversity and Inclusion” hiring plan, which claims “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.”
“FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities,” by Emma Colton, Fox News, Published Jan. 14, 2024 at https://nypost.com/2024/01/14/news/faas-diversity-push-includes-hiring-people-with-intellectual-and-psychiatric-disabilities/
These ideas are irrational and potentially destructive to the flying public. It is preposterous that such insane ideas could be accepted by an entire government agency. But apparently they have. It appears that no idea is too batshit crazy to be accepted by a group of human beings.
Dawkins’ explanation for the meme may provide the clue to an answer for how such stupidities can be accepted: Ideas are not “good” or “bad”, they are not “insane” or “beneficial”, they are simply accepted or rejected in a process that mirrors natural selection. However, natural selection operates on the idea that the most beneficial mutations eventually survive. So how could an insane idea like that of the FAA become accepted within the agency?
My guess is that it won’t be broadly accepted by society. Seriously, who wants doors to blow out in the middle of a flight, or planes to catch on fire, due to incompetence of “diversity” hires? However, it is a testament to free will and mass formation psychosis that it could gain acceptance in a large and critical government agency.
This could occur if there was, in fact, a mind virus in operation.
So where does the mind virus originate? If Elon is correct and it is being “piped to earth,” then its origins are beyond the boundaries of our atmosphere. That is a wild, but not preposterous suggestion, considering that there may be other civilizations “out there” with exotic technology and who have an interest in the earth. My latest novel, The Intervention, explores this idea.
Or, alternatively, perhaps “mind viruses” originate within the collective consciousness of humanity. Let’s say that human thought persists, and that every thought is a little quantum, or packet, that finds its way into the human ThoughtSpace that surrounds the earth, and that others can pick up on these thoughts. Jung postulated an idea that vaguely resembles this conception when he described the collective unconscious, a collection of archetypes (thought or symbolic imagery) that are present in the individual unconscious. Here, though, we expand the idea to a collective consciousness, a dynamical thought-based system that evolves and changes in every moment. In this conception, memes/ideas that find favor are consciously accepted and spread. If they become widespread enough they may survive from generation to generation and become archetypes, and part of the human system of belief.
Evil
Evil is intentional, malicious harm. Intentional harm comes from conscious decision-making. Therefore, anyone who commits evil does so “with malice and forethought.” I don’t mean crimes of passion, where an impulse is acted upon.
The Mexican Drug cartels, for example, are evil. They knowingly traffic in and abuse human beings and children for money. They murder others who get in their way. Those who do this act intentionally and can be treated accordingly.
The impulsive killer may be, as defense lawyers say, only temporarily insane; blinded in the moment by emotion, as opposed to the murderer, who is acting knowingly and intentionally. However, a person who commits a violent, impulsive act must have been thinking along those lines prior to commission of the act, entraining his or her thoughts in that direction. When sane people get angry they don’t act upon those violent impulses, unless they have been quietly in that “mindset” for quite some time.
Conclusion
Individuals have free choice to accept or reject memes. Mind viruses are just collections or patterns of thought, and everyone has the ability to control their own thinking.
Mind viruses or no, ultimately every human being is responsible for their actions. To deny that truth leads to the sort of victim/violent/irrational society we live in today, and an FAA that knowingly hires people with severe intellectual, psychiatric, or emotional problems.
A society whose institutions do not practice responsibility and integrity is a dead society. Individuals who do not practice this will go down the tubes.
What can be done? Consciously practice responsibility, personal integrity, and hang out with others who do the same. It is not anyone’s duty to waste their time reforming persons who engage in victimhood and prey on the good nature of others. As the Great Awakening proceeds it is creating a rising tide that will lift all boats and expose the grifters and the criminals.
[1] See, “What’s in a Meme?”, Feb 4, 2014, from the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science at https://richarddawkins.net/2014/02/whats-in-a-meme/