{"id":341,"date":"2017-10-04T11:06:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T19:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralockhart.com\/WP\/?p=341"},"modified":"2017-10-04T11:06:10","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T19:06:10","slug":"mind-parasites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/mind-parasites\/","title":{"rendered":"MIND PARASITES"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mind Parasites<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never embraced Colin Wilson\u2019s philosophy of \u201cexistential optimism,\u201d but I have devoured his work and feasted on his provocative and insightful ideas for many years. His work is a veritable garden of delights even if that delight comes in the form of horror. I\u2019ve been re-reading his novel, The Mind Parasites <\/em>(1967), a Lovecraftian-inspired work that embodies his aim of trying to create a \u201cnew type of novel.\u201d What has become punctum[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em> for me in this reading, is a feeling that the image of mind<\/em> parasite<\/em>s<\/em> is so apt as an image for thinking about our current political and cultural climate. Before I go into this directly, it will help to lay out some orienting observations.<\/p>\n

We are aware of \u201cvirus\u201d both in its biological and cyberlogical meanings and how both spread <\/em>collectively. The word \u201cvirus\u201d is Latin for \u201cpoison.\u201d Virus is the most abundant life form, though its \u201cliving\u201d status is more an \u201cin-between\u201d life form. Virus infection kills the host cell and can be quite lethal to the whole organism. The small pox virus brought to the Americas by Europeans killed more than 70% of the indigenous population. The Spanish Flu killed upward of 100 million people world-wide. Often there is little or no treatment for viral infections\u2014particularly new ones. Security agencies are constantly looking for signs of virus, both biological and cyberlogical, that could be used as terrorist weapons.<\/p>\n

A parasite<\/em> works differently. The parasite takes up residence in a host and uses the host\u2019s resources to satisfy the parasite\u2019s survival needs. It does not work to kill<\/em> the host, but to increase consumption of the host\u2019s resources as well as changing<\/em> the host\u2019s behavior to secure the parasite\u2019s ultimate aim\u2014its propagation. The parasite conceals itself so that the host has little or no awareness of the parasite itself. The parasite is immune to efforts to treat it by treating the \u201csymptoms\u201d alone. The host can suffer in many ways: mental, emotional, and physiological. In a sense, the parasite \u201ctakes over\u201d control of the host. While we know about parasites as living organisms, most are not aware of cyberlogical<\/em> parasites. The best known example is the \u201cbot,\u201d which is a robot<\/em>ic script that takes up residence in one computer after another and begins its \u201cfeeding\u201d off the host in various ways, often without any knowledge on the part of the computer user,<\/em> as well as changing the behavior of the host systems.<\/p>\n

Everyone who uses a computer connected to the internet is as risk. And like a parasite, the limits to which the parasite can grow in enabling is own ends to the detriment of the host (our computers and by extension almost every aspect of our life) are at present unbounded. The more everything becomes \u201csmart\u201d and \u201cconnected\u201d the more we are at risk. To cite just one example from a recent report: \u201cBots are feasting on the economic bloodstream of the digital age.\u201d[2]<\/a> I believe it is useful to think of parasites in various forms: as biological, cyberlogical, and psychological entities<\/em>.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Using biological entities in cyberlogical and psychological space is a form of analogical<\/em> research and a productive way of thinking (reasoning) \u201coutside the box.\u201d[4]<\/a> We do this naturally<\/em> in forming language metaphors. For example, we use the word \u201cparasite\u201d to speak of someone who \u201cexploits others and gives nothing in return.\u201d We might think of such behavior as the result<\/em> of parasitic invasion. A parasitic invasion \u201ctakes over\u201d and controls the behavior of the host. If we imagine that parasites can be spread in many ways (as are actual parasites), then we can imagine the spread of cultural, political and psychological mind parasites as an unsuspected form of control of human behavior.<\/p>\n

With the ever increasing interaction of climate change processes in or entering in exponential phases, it is quite likely that biological<\/em> parasites will become an evermore virulent phenomenon. With the increasing interaction of cyberlogical systems (the internet), which are also likely entering into exponential phases of penetration, it is quite likely that our interaction with cyber systems will become pervasive, ubiquitous and unpredictable. This would naturally include robotic systems of all types. And with the ever increasing exposure to psychological parasites of all kinds, we can expect increasing degrees of instability of traditional ways of functioning at all levels at both an individual and collective level.<\/p>\n

The following questions, among others, I\u2019ll take up in future posts on this topic are:<\/p>\n

1.How do mind parasites spread? What purposes do they serve?<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In addition to natural mind parasites, how are they engineered, and by whom (people,<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 computers, robots, etc.)<\/em><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Is everyone infected? Are there natural immunities? Is there any treatment for brain<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 processes destroyed by mind parasites? <\/em><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. What characteristics \u201cinvite\u201d or encourage mind parasite takeover?<\/em><\/li>\n
      2. What cognitive biases are a result of mind parasites?<\/em><\/li>\n
      3. When mind parasites take over, they likely destroy what we think of as the best human qualities and replace these qualities with parasitic qualities. This is how humans become parasites.<\/em><\/li>\n
      4. An insidious form of mind parasite is \u201cmoney.\u201d The danger of this is unreognized.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        [1]<\/a> Punctum<\/em> is Roland Barthes\u2019 term for the element in a photograph that attracts his psyche autonomously and makes the photograph \u201cexist\u201d for him. It is contrasted with stadium,<\/em> which embodies the photographer\u2019s intentionality. The value of this distinction has wide relevance. See Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. <\/em>New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981.<\/p>\n

        [2]<\/a> Kellerman, Tom. \u201cBOTS: Cyber-Parasites.\u201d World Bank Security Team, July 2004.<\/p>\n

        [3]<\/a> I use the term \u201centities\u201d deliberately to emphasize the sense of \u201cforeign\u201d life (of whatever form) along the lines that Jung intended when he wrote, \u201cWe would do well, therefore, to think of the creative process as a living thing implanted in the human psyche.\u201d Jung, C. G. \u201cOn the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry.\u201d CW: The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature. <\/em>Vol. 15, Para. 115. The question arises as to whether this sense of \u201cimplant\u201d is different than parasite. This topic will be the subject of a future blog post.<\/p>\n

        [4]<\/a> For emphasizing the value of analogical research, I am indebted to Dr. Mils Hills, of the Northampton Business School in the UK. His paper, \u201cA New Perspective on the Achievement of Psychological Effects from Cyber Warfare Payloads: The Analogy of Parasitic Manipulation of Host Behavior\u201d (Journal of Law & Cyber Warfare<\/em>, Vol. 1, Winter 2012, Issue 1, p. 209-217) has proven invaluable to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        The Mind Parasites   I\u2019ve never embraced Colin Wilson\u2019s philosophy of \u201cexistential optimism,\u201d but I have devoured his work and feasted on his provocative and insightful ideas for many years. His work is a veritable garden of delights even if that delight comes in the form of horror. I\u2019ve been re-reading his novel, The Mind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-soon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}