The Sanity Virus

Applying the epidemiological model to spiritual warfare.

From what I’ve observed during my brief sliver of Earthly life, most people who ponder human nature and culture require three tools:

1. An analogy.

2. One or more models that neatly illustrates this analogy.

3. A coherent story that explains these theoretical elements as an immanent whole.

Let’s begin by analyzing the first two tools, which are connected but require the third to be useful when attacking a given cultural problem.

When developing them in language, the KISS principle is usually applied: the simpler the analog and the more isolated its model, the better. This is true whether we’re discussing the Cartesian theory of organic automata (and our exception from it) or the neural networks of today’s Big Bad Artificial Intellects. In any age or region, humans will describe ourselves in accordance with whatever technologies happen to be ascendant at the place/time, either in contrast to that tech or as analogous to it. Consider that at one time, the domesticated horse was a dominant technology, from which the ascendant human analog was mainly about breeding and training.

A friendly reminder from a bunch of crooked dirtbags

The same goes for biomedical tech today. This has especially been the case lately with epidemiology, which has ascended in the culture and now rivals hardware/software analogies for the top slot.¹ This was true before COVID-19, and even before Dawkins coined the term “meme.” But the rise of the consumer internet is what spurred the analogy’s adoptive spread and its associated models into overdrive, as a form of meta-memetic contagion (i.e. a virologic theory spread virally). It seems like everything-and-one became “viral” overnight. Over time, the term came to mean all sorts of things — but also the same thing, sprouted from the same root.

If I had to boil this root down to one word, it would be “transfer.” The idea is basically that all we see of human nature and its products is the result of a multitude of invisible transfers of information (or, at least, a form of transference that occurs at a level that’s simultaneously too large and too microscopic to easily track or predict). In the associated model, everything from technological developments to cultural norms spreads in the way a disease does, transferring its state-changes to the nearest local nodes.

This supposed transfer process repeats until either the whole of the body (in this case, whole cultures or humanity itself) has become “infected” with the new information, or until defensive “antibodies” identify and eventually starve out the viral strain. The simplicity and political expediency of this model explains its wide use; two opposed groups on any topic of cultural import will see their opponents as the contagion, and themselves as the immune response.

There are other models that suit the development of an overall narrative. Some have adopted the idea that all cultural conflict is viral, in the sense that all ideas and products spread without any extant immune system to combat them. In this model, something like the current cultural brawl over “transgenderism” has no significance to a larger state of cultural health; if the question is ever resolved, that would simply be a matter of one virus transferring its code more efficiently, and crowding out the cellular space for a competing virus to replicate.

In either case, the language of viral infection has been used to describe not just transgenderism, but the whole of the Woke project, with tentacles that extend into more or less every category of social and individual identification. For its opponents, the analogy of immune response comes to seem ever more useful and apt, because embedded deep in the concepts of viruses and other contagions is their danger.

That model isn’t without logic, especially in extremis. For example, if every person on Earth got sex change operations tomorrow, the human species would likely vanish in a handful of decades or less. This would likely be the result even with widespread, affordable test tube babies, human clones and other technical solutions on the table. It’s unlikely that anyone would care to go on propagating humans, in such a world of sexlessness, physical torment and everlasting regret. All that would be left behind is a bunch of desiccating artifacts, a mass grave for the devil to dance on.

But that’s the extreme (and overly simplified) example. Even if the analog of trans-as-sociogenic-virus is apt, the fever will undoubtedly burn out before any such severe result. Or, at the very least, it will transform into something else, as the data transferred into new infection targets mutates. In ten years, we could be talking about "All the damned werewolves,” for example. Or werebunnies, or cyborgs, or whatever monster is ascendant at that time.

We laugh at this sort of nonsense. And it’s good to laugh. As Sherriff Bell of No Country For Old Men notes:

"That's all right. I laugh myself sometimes. There ain't a whole lot else you can do."

But those of us who observe Clown World from the outside also see the essential horror embedded in it. I tend to think this is why so many people try to medicalize the situation. In some sense, our very naming conventions for any manifestation of physical horror follows this route.

For example, we point at a Giant Hairy Fang Monster in the woods and call it a “bear” -- or better yet “Ursus Linnaeus.” I suspect we mainly do this to demystify the threat, to make it less scary.²

The same might be said of the “woke mind virus” concept. By reducing the phenomenon to biomedical terms, we are also reassuring ourselves that its spread can be halted and its victims cured. Or, if we adopt the “competing strains” model, that a counter-virus can outcompete it in the long run.

To be clear, I don’t subscribe to the “viral” model of cultural transmission, or the agency-free view of reality it implies. We are all making choices, all the time. And, yes, that includes the Woke — at least initially.

That’s not to say the viral model of Woke is totally useless, because at some point in the process I think it shrinks and corrupts the will to such an extent that the ability to resist becomes nearly impossible (but only nearly, thanks to the spark of the Divine). It may be that certain thresholds of “viral load” exist that, once crossed, start to winnow away your options until choices become almost non-existent, and the victim turns into the thrall of something that’s both inhuman and rapaciously destructive. That state could very aptly describe “demonic possession” when you think about it, though of a less sudden and totalizing form.

There are other useful aspects to the viral model, too. For instance, the relatively high cultural availability of something like transgenderism certainly played some role in its rapid spread. When a protected cultural space is reserved for the phenomenon to expand into, expand it will. This is especially the case for the young, who are struggling to understand the world and their place inside it without much experience to guide them.

In the pathogenic virology/immunology model, we can think of young people as being immunocompromised, in the sense that their baseline immune response is weakened by default. Importantly, this was the case in every region and generation of mankind; the baseline defense will always be relatively lower for human children (and for many young animals too, although their vulnerability lies outside the bounds of cultural contagions as we perceive them).

But what if we were to look at it from the multi-vector (i.e competing viruses) perspective? The viral transmission aspects in this modality could be akin to something like Beatlemania. The girls all scream and weep at the sight of mop-topped Brits they’d never heard of a week ago, because they’ve seen other girls do that on TV.

So in order for the Beatlemania virus to take root and spread, it first had to be made culturally available by a square like Ed Sullivan. There is no immune response to the phenomenon, but counter-viral agents lack the availability to compete over time, because the authority figures and institutions see more value in Beatlemania victims than in, say, young girls who feint at the sound of Mozart.

“OMG I can’t believe they’re playing Allegretto!”

Now, to put this in terms of a more current story, the “woke mind virus” can be compared to a visit from Dracula. Yes, he can possess your body and soul, and, yes, the evil coursing through your veins can spread like a sickness that eventually overrides your will. But the trick is you must first make the choice to invite him in. There’s a fractal pattern at play here as well; as with Sullivan (and even with the U.S. Immigration Visa system) the “adult” gatekeepers first had to open the door to Dracula, and cordially invite him in for a drink.

After the gatekeeper (institutional authority) invites the vampire (pathogenic agent) in the house (society/culture), the individual must then invite it into his bedroom (soul) before transfer can take place. These invitations are typically the result of temptations like the desire for social rank and the difficulties associated with refusing to conform.

When enough of the latter infiltrations occur, the whole thing looks very similar to a spontaneous outbreak, even though a number of critical choices were made along the way. The harms that flow in the wake of such outbreaks are often misdiagnosed as a result. After all, nobody credible believes in vampires (i.e. parasitic entities with agency and goals). They believe in much more respectable things like emergence, ultimate Darwinism and authorless trends that are conjured randomly from the ether. They also tend to believe that nothing can be done about the transmission process anyway, and that Clown World can only be an entirely natural and inevitable transformation (and even signifies "progress").³

As for the rest of us dummies, we need to improvise new strategies and tactics, because the current set doesn’t appear to be working very well at the moment (or, at least, not fast enough, given the stakes). As usual, the best we can do is analogize, build experimental models, and explain the results as a shared story about reality that recognizes the forms of both good and evil.

Let’s start by imagining not a demon standing at the front door, but something like an angel. As the same species of creature, the mechanisms for “contagion” are largely — or even entirely — the same. For example, the angelic being also requires an open door and invitation (cultural availability and institutional permission) in order to transfer its competing virus to the the occupants. As with Dracula’s version, those who are sufficiently infected by this virus become new transmitters of it, capable of knocking on other bedroom doors and gaining access.

In this case, the embedded instructions of this “sanity virus” would spread logic, intelligible moral order and the happiness that results from such patterns. In other words, it doesn’t seek to identify and drive out the Clown World infection like an immune system would, but merely to transfer its pattern to ever larger clusters of neighboring cells until the rival disease is no longer flourishing, but rather fighting to survive in the shrinking availability market.

How would that analogy change the way we strategize solutions?

First, let’s consider those friendly forces who view the problem of Woke (and other dangerous trends) as strictly immunological. They claim— quite often and loudly these days — that the solution is to capture the gatekeeping roles, mainly through the mediums of elections and new antivirus legal frameworks (the current raft of bills in Florida would be a good example of this approach). The idea here is not to just put more locks on the front door, but to ensure that those who answer it can wisely differentiate between demons and angels who visit it.

For example, a new law might establish an age-verification system for porn websites, as recently happened in Utah. Some might point at that and call it a win: they elected sharp-eyed new gatekeepers, installed new locks, and a vampire named “Pornhub” slunk off dejectedly into the night.

Sounds boffo, right?

But I see two big problems with this approach:

1. There are already many, many other vampires who made it inside the house. These demonic creatures are more knowledgeable and adaptable than any gatekeeper can hope to police (consider even the transfer of pornography will not be stifled by this move, simply due to the nature of file sharing, and to high speed information networks in general). These viruses will go on replicating without competition.

2. Battening down the hatches and installing a bunch of overly suspicious guards will make it more difficult to invite the angel in. Indeed, given they are the same species, even a wise gatekeeper can be tricked into thinking they’re seeing a devil. This is a problem, because without the angel virus’ competing presence, it’s only a matter of time before the infection becomes absolute, and the body consequently dies.

This is the way memelords view the situation; they both understand the “sane gatekeeper” as a Little Dutch boy who quickly runs out of stoppering fingers, and also that demons are already running loose inside the gate. Their solution is to kick open back doors and smash windows, in the hopes that some of the angel’s glow — and perhaps even the sanity virus itself — will find its way inside. This isn’t even incorrect; some people will notice the light and recognize that all is not lost, that there’s still hope.

But I submit this approach is insufficient on its own. Whatever viral load is transmitted won’t be enough to turn the tide, and angels don’t enter through broken windows and back doors. The goal is to somehow invite the angel inside, while bypassing the authority of all crazed and sane gatekeepers alike to get it done.

Like any other human who ever lived, the heroes who approach the problem this way will need a unifying story that they will strive to spread to the closest local nodes (e.g. friends, family, neighbors, co-workers). This story can be considered to be the informational content of the sanity virus.

Their mechanism of infection isn’t just to tell this story, the way such stories are sometimes told (often drily and uselessly) in houses of prayer. The viral agent must inhabit and live the story, with the ultimate goal of outcompeting and overwhelming the 🤡🌎 strain, in any victims who can still be saved.

And all of that is my roundabout way of proposing a new tactic:

Sanity Clubs.

I’ll say much more about this concept in a separate post. In summary, my idea is to build private associations which are rooted in a storytelling tradition that describes the current state of the world. Imagine, for example, a “Fellowship Club” that draws its analogies and models from the world of Tolkien’s literature, or a “Star Wars Club” that emulates aspects of intergalactic conflict and the ways of the Force, or even a “Buffyverse Club” that builds its language, customs and traditions from those and other supernatural TV shows. Almost any story framework will do, provided it recognizes the existence of good and evil, and our need to defeat the latter.

I’m not saying we all need to choose the same stories and symbols, or that they need to be drawn from existing intellectual properties. Each club can write their own unique story, and charter their own rules, roles, rites and customs. Upon entering such circles, entrants will also be given unique names and special missions, all in service of expanding the circle — “spreading the virus,” so to speak. Think of it as a “Skull and Bones” for the good guys, a secret society minus all the psychopathy and narcissism.

And being the good guys, we should remember to have fun with it. If the club is similar to LARPing, then it would be the kind of LARP with lots of jokes and good-time vibes. Like Beatlemania, the resultant viruses will be fun. Our enemy’s deadly seriousness is a key weakness, which is why they often present like hypnotized cult members. These clubs aren’t intended to be cults or religions, but rather viral transmitters of happiness, attracting people who actually want to spread happiness in the world.

And hopefully, that world will be 3-Dimensional. While some introductions and club communications can be done online, the ultimate goal here is meatspace meet-ups and genuine connection. Part of the spiritual crisis is this lack of physicality. We should throw more parties, in other words.

But like I said, I’ll expand on this wacky idea later. In the meantime, if you see an opportunity to spread your own sanity virus, go ahead and start frenchkissing, sneezing in elevators, licking doorknobs and whatnot.

The world you save may be your own.

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P.S. If you found any of this valuable (and can spare any change), consider dropping a tip in the cup for ya boy. I’ll try to figure out something I can give you back. Thanks in advance.

1. Indeed, when we take into account “computer viruses” the two analogies gracefully interoperate.

2. It’s also why, near the end of "McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” we encounter a clownish dancing bear

3. Oddly enough, many of the same people believe that “climate change” is anything but.