An ant climbs up a blade of grass, then falls down but keeps coming back up the blade, over and over again for no apparent reason and for no benefit to itself…why? It ends up that there is no biological reason for the ant to act like this, but it does because it has been commandeered by a tiny parasite, the Lancet Fluke, which needs to get itself into the belly of a cow or sheep in order to complete its reproductive cycle. The Lancet Fluke parasite is leading and compelling the ant into a subordinate position to its own need and the need of its offspring. Are there other hitchhiker parasites that can infect other species just for the benefit of the guest and not the host?

According to a new book by Daniel C. Dennett, (philosopher and co-director of Tufts Center for Cognitive Studies) titled “Breaking the Spell – Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” this parasite phenomena also takes place in human beings, they are called Concepts! Dennett draws this parallel between a worm and an idea, and even though ideas are not organisms like worms that can invade a host, but are created by the mind and can act in the same manner as a parasite in terms of taking over the brain for it’s own purposes. Not only that, but “ideas and concepts can spread from mind to mind like a parasite, surviving translation between different languages, hitchhiking on songs and icons and statues, coming together in unlikely combinations in particular people’s heads, where they give rise to yet further new creations, bearing family resemblances to the ideas that inspired them but adding new features, new powers as they go.”

So what happens when these parasitic ideas as concepts have their own agenda, one that is independent from the health and well being of the person it is in? What happens when concepts obsess the brain and their own cause becomes more important that of the individual host? What happens when these ideas and concepts encompass religious belief and the issue of faith?

Dennett seems to be dealing with some of these questions in his book by asking more questions concerning why human beings have the instinct to adhere to religious and spiritual doctrines, though he does not seem to be attacking religion outright. His subject is why people believe in religious doctrine in this day in age that are capable of causing repugnant behavior, like war, suicide, political domination, child abuse and the abuse of women.

His subject is not dealing with the existence of God or even why any one individual personally believes in God, but focuses on how and why people adopt religious dogmas, particularly when they may be harmful to the person who holds them. He is more interested in the “Belief in Belief” which can result in fixated religious convictions.

So, can religious beliefs and dogma that harm individuals be considered like parasites that take over a host mind and act for the benefit of the belief and not the individual?

My personal history in ISKCON would believe me to say, yes this is very possible. I would not say this is true for everyone involved in religious institutions like ISKCON, but it can help explain what happens when an institution loses track of its purpose of helping facilitate a persons search for self, higher truths and the concept of GOD, and instead becomes a religious belief making business, focusing on looking for converts and confirmation of their own beliefs, imparting information that may not be of particular benefit to the individual, but only to the institution. I would say that many religious institutions active today are in the belief business, imparting mental parasites, asking people to adopt various religious and metaphysical beliefs, not to mention psychological notions like high self esteem, trust and a sense of worth. These beliefs as parasites then drive their own agendas, making a person believe that they now belong to the one and only truth, and that if you follow those particular rules and practices being taught, that then you are right and now only good things will transpire for the good of self and the world. It answers questions of Birth, Life and Death, with a historical party line and offers a comradeship of fellow believers in that particular business of belief. In this belief business, one has to have the right belief because the stakes are high. You are compelled to hold on to them tightly for dear life or suffer the consequences of all the bad things that exist outside in the dark world that does not share the one truth that you now have.

This is not to say that one should not have a spiritual faith or belong to a religion or believe in God. No, this is just stating that once you are free of having to believe in anything, you are then free to believe in anything you choose and want. One could adopt traditional or non-traditional methods of religion, politics, economics, metaphysics or psychology and not be guided by an obligation to a belief that is not having any benefit to you personally anymore. Kill the parasites within and climb the blade of grass because you want to or get off the damn stalk if it does not serve you or society in general. This may explain why with maturity, many people here at Gaudiay Repercussions have left ISKCON or Gaudiya Vaisnavism completely, while others may have stayed or kept one foot in and one foot out. It may be that after finally choosing their faith and spiritual conviction, many went back to being practicing Vaisnavas, trying to reform the historical mess of child and women abuse and political unrealized Guruship that has fouled something so idealistically promising.

Once the parasite concept has left you as a person, you will no longer find yourself serving a cause that is a detriment to yourself anymore and you may then choose freely to be true to yourself and be open to whatever truth becomes freely realized internally, with the realization that yes, you can change your mind, your faith, your direction or even go back to where you started from with a deeper understanding of why you chose that faith in the first place. Freedom to choose and create your life based on strong underlying realized structures that are not based on fear or what someone has chosen for you, seems to be a good way to ensure that no parasites exist within and that your faith is a healthy one, no matter what form or traditon it may take.

That gentleman came to speak here at FSU. I didn't attend however, as being a person of faith and a budding scholar, I was drinking a six pack and watching The Big Lebowski that night I believe.

Thanks very much, Kalisurfer, for that very interesting post! It appears to me that Richard Dawkins enunciated a similar idea in his books (specifically 'A Devil's Chaplain') where he likens religion to a "mind virus".

I'm currently reading a book exploring Zoroastrianism and it's pervasive influence over modern-day culture and religion. The author, Kriwaczek, discusses the links between the Persian cult of Mithra and the Roman cult of Mithras, asking the question as to why Mithras-worship suddenly became very popular and spread like wildfire throughout the Roman Empire. Kriwaczek refers to Dawkins' "mind virus" idea which seems very similar to Dennet's proposal from what you have presented.

Things to chew on indeed...

I read about this parasite/host behavior modification a couple of years ago - fascinating.

Makes you wonder how much of our behavior is due to the influence of the billions of living entities living on our skin and within our bodies.

There must be an effect. In the foods we choose or where we spend free time, perhaps? Pet interaction, friends? Swimming in the sea?

Who knows how we are aiding the survival of our hitch hikers? And by doing so we probably help ourselves to survive too?

Could this explain the high anxiety levels of those obsessed with cleanliness and purity?

There is also research indicating that the presence of a few intestinal worms helps us to tolerate toxins in our food, as well.

Long live the bacteria! Long live the parasites!

my 2 paise: The problem is that the questions Dennett raises are themselves only concepts, in essence. The above can be concept reversed too, -what parasite is it that can make an individual so self-centered and blind to any good for any entity other than himself - to the point the individual eventually self-destucts?

And aren't these two really the same parasite? Two sides of the same coin? Doesn't the individual/host gain something by going along with the group-think parasite's prompts, something hidden in the subconscious perhaps, and therefore not as obvious as what Dennett seems to be focusing on? The desire for recognition, the feeling of superiority in its different flavors, physical or ideological destruction of 'the other', or even something more harmless (and likely) like compensation for lack of self-esteem and freedom from existential misery and fear?

Not that I'm blaming the victims of groups, but there is often this element. Others are true victims of course who had no choice in the matter and gain nothing (e.g gurukulis in Isk.). It's also true that some groups very much intend to exploit, disempower, decieve, and manipulate their members.


Dennett is just adding a new twist, just new language really, to the Unknown (or the Obvious, depending on how one looks at it), which is what many scholars earn their living at. Baking intellectual twinkies to munch on while we watch our day to day lives go by. Missing the sunset, the smell of the Earth after a rain, a cold beer with a good friend, or whatever version of spirituality makes one happy. There is a balance in life we must struggle to find, often through trial and error, and worring about various parasites will certainly not contribute to mine.

I would draw a parallel between a worm and a sperm... or to avoid being sexist, betwen a worm and our genes. They can be quite ruthless in affecting our behaviors to aid their own propagation beyond our individual lifetimes. It can be quite hard to detect all the subtle, ingenious ways in which they influence us to create opportunities for them to be recombined and get a new youthful body to ride on, off into the sunset.

this is why the great baldheaded swamis of yore advocated celebacy and not looking at womens' boobs. mens' worms are capeable of being at the wrong place for the right reason all too often, and thus perpetuate later generations of horny men.

Thanks Azar’iL,

It is a creative explanation on how thoughts can overpower a person, cause things like addictions and behavior that are not beneficial to a their personal wellbeing. Thanks for sharing the parallel in the writings of Kriwaczek and Dawkins.

Darwin,

Maggots in my brain telling me WWI destroyed everything except FDR who was a Nazi still killing Russians in a genocide full of liberal dogma battling fundamental Vaisnavism that also happens to be killing me with internal parasitical preciseness—is exactly the graphic novel I have been unable to find at the bookstore lately.

Will you please write and illustrate it, for the world is ripe for such info wrapped in magic, but could you also add the Pope, Halliburton, Bono, Hummers, Boston tourists, Rabbi Ed Feinstien and my crazy neighbor Kumar into the story!

Angrezi,

Yes, it is just another theory, another story, another parasite depending on which side of the philosophical fence one may be sitting on. I just thought it was an interesting way to explain concepts and thoughts in religion that make one act in ways that may not be beneficial to the self in the long run. Is it just more mental parasitical grist for the mill?…maybe…but I like your idea of stepping away from all thought parasites and focusing on the earth, sunsets and having a cold beer with a friend!

Dhyana,

I like the idea of Worm and Sperm, sounds like a great title for a novel and a ‘pair of sights’ that are dangerous to the creative visual mind!!! Parasite genes seem terminal, but would go along way in explaining the strange things humans are capable of, especially in the name of religion. We are all hosts to so many things, be they thoughts, concepts, parasites, genes, bad blood, gas from bad burritos, Brittney Spears songs one cannot get out of the head, temple memories with Bhavananda, Oedipus complex’s, radio waves, satellite transmissions, micro waves, allergens, beer and gin and symptomatic bhava that will be eventually be termed as conditional sahajiyaism by the GBC, the type that can only be cured by a two year subscription to BTG and strict prohibitive ban on visiting Gaudiya Repercussions!
ThankX!

Homer,
Now, late at night, when I think I am by myself with a good book by the only light on in the house, it will be reassuring to know that I am not alone—and that a party is raging on inside the belly!!!

The thing that cases a feeling of trepidation in me when I read all these psychological and evolutionary biological explanations for this or that, it leads me to think about Man's Eternal Quest for the "Truth".

Man journeys far and wide, through hills and dales, over mountains and valleys, through years, decades, centuries, millenia, in a never-ending quest for the "Truth".

And when Man is on the verge of discovering the "Truth", he finds that there was nothing to discover in the first place!

Horrifying.

I doubt we would know the 'TRUTH' if we tripped over it.

but if it is indeed never found, I'll volunteer to undergo beer-treatments to search the unknown on behalf of you all

Any and all desires to be an authority figure on your behalf will fail, it is built into the programmable code in the Darwinian DNA genome. Your desire to teach me or anyone is actually a virus in the inherent code, a shadow parasite, so abort all attempts at jumping onto the throne left empty by others who have tried before you.

The book you mention was actually written in 72’, unless of course you have the second printing, which is abridged.

There is no type on my fingers, there is no writing in my hand, the absence cries for what was once good, that is my exercise!

You’re right from your side,
I’m right from mine,
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind.

Here's something for your creative visual mind, Kalisurfer:

The book from 1972 that I was talking about is titled Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey and C.C Carlson.

In this book, she wept to the saffron wicked birds of prey, who picked up on her bread crumb sins without realizing that there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden!

Wow, Dhyana, parasite sperm smilies without smiles searching for a host to give birth to a new concept that will make their faith reborn to a religious practice that will work against the their well being …well…that is so extremely scary that it actually transcends itself into the realm of funny, ! Thankx for the visual!!!

But if that religious practice works against the wellbeing of the host, it will also (being renunciate) perhaps work against the sperms' own chances to propagate! I mean, if the new religious concept makes someone a strict sannyasi, or at least someone whose "lips curl at the thought of sex and who spits at the thought," á la Yamunacarya -- won't that result in less procreation?

I think Dhyana, that you may have found an unintended positive by-product in the hypothesis that religious thought as a parasite can take over the free will of the human host and commit them to a unintended celibate lifestyle—a decline in the alarming growing rate of the worlds population!

I think that this “Parasite as Faith” theory would only hold true towards those who do not choose the celibate life out of a mature personal conviction and instead go into because one had to take that vow to be an official member of that religion, (ISKCON Initiation as example) unless they want to conceive a child. Thus perhaps adding fuel to a sexually repressed environment with misogynistic tendencies and the abuse of children.

I don’t know what the author Daniel Dennett would have to say about the ISKCON experience, for he seems to focus more on why people join radical religions like Jihadi Islam, where they will martyr themselves to kill others without much hesitation on the orders from their spiritual leaders.

Great question though!

Now you've got me really interested. I'll keep an eye out for that book.

All I can say is 72 virgins

Strange how in one Religion, people will kill and die in the name of their Lord born to a virgin, while in another, they will kill and die to be with 72 of them!!!!

I think we need less Virgins in our world religions, then maybe we can finally have peace!

I had that book back in '74, before I was old enough to go to the temple myself. Hard to believe I joined after reading that, huh?

Very hard, indeed! I have read that book in paperback version. They had it in our library here in Finland, can you imagine?

Oh that's funny, I wonder why they got it?

I read it and just told myself that she didn't "get it" because she wasn't really a devotee.

I was so naive.

Once there were mice living in the walls of our house and the noise was so loud they would wake us up in the middle of the night.

I got the bright idea of cutting a hole in the wall to let our family cat hunt them.

It didn't work out the way I had hoped. The cat didn't like the idea of entering our walls and the mice probably liked the extra ventilation. We all had a good laugh as I repaired the hole.

I swear the mice laughed at me too, judging from the racket they made that night.

It takes a few weeks for the smell of rotting mice carcases to exit the walls. And even then it is more like a very gradual fading away to the point of familiarization rather than vanishing completely.

This faith as a parasite idea was ripped off from meme theorists:

Memes: Introduction
by Glenn Grant, Memeticist

"An idea is something you have;
an ideology is something that has you."

--Morris Berman

What if ideas were viruses?

Consider the T-phage virus. A T-phage cannot replicate itself; it reproduces by hijacking the DNA of a bacterium, forcing its host to make millions of copies of the phage. Similarly, an idea can parasitically infect your mind and alter your behavior, causing you to want to tell your friends about the idea, thus exposing them to the idea-virus. Any idea which does this is called a "meme" (pronounced `meem').

Unlike a virus, which is encoded in DNA molecules, a meme is nothing more than a pattern of information, one that happens to have evolved a form which induces people to repeat that pattern. Typical memes include individual slogans, ideas, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions. It may sound a bit sinister, this idea that people are hosts for mind-altering strings of symbols, but in fact this is what human culture is all about.

As a species, we have co-evolved with our memes. Imagine a group of early Homo Sapiens in the Late Pleistocene epoch. They've recently arrived with the latest high-tech hand axes and are trying to show their Homo Erectus neighbours how to make them. Those who can't get their heads around the new meme will be at a disadvantage and will be out-evolved by their smarter cousins.

Meanwhile, the memes themselves are evolving, just as in the game of "Telephone" (where a message is whispered from person to person, being slightly mis-replicated each time). Selection favors the memes which are easiest to understand, to remember, and to communicate to others. Garbled versions of a useful meme would presumably be selected out.

So, in theory at least, the ability to understand and communicate complex memes is a survival trait, and natural selection should favor those who aren't too conservative to understand new memes. Or does it? In practice, some people are going to be all too ready to commit any new meme that comes along, even if it should turn out to be deadly nonsense, like:

"Jump off a cliff and the gods will make you fly."

Such memes do evolve, generated by crazy people, or through mis-replication. Notice, though, that this meme might have a lot of appeal. The idea of magical flight is so tantalizing -- maybe, if I truly believed, I just might leap off the cliff and...

This is a vital point: people try to infect each other with those memes which they find most appealing, regardless of the memes' objective value or truth. Further, the carrier of the cliff-jumping meme might never actually take the plunge; they may spend the rest of their long lives infecting other people with the meme, inducing millions of gullible fools to leap to their deaths. Historically, this sort of thing is happening all the time.

Whether memes can be considered true "life forms" or not is a topic of some debate, but this is irrelevant: they behave in a way similar to life forms, allowing us to combine the analytical techniques of epidemiology, evolutionary science, immunology, linguistics, and semiotics, into an effective system known as "memetics." Rather than debate the inherent "truth" or lack of "truth" of an idea, memetics is largely concerned with how that idea gets itself replicated.

Memetics is vital to the understanding of cults, ideologies, and marketing campaigns of all kinds, and it can help to provide immunity from dangerous information-contagions. You should be aware, for instance, that you just been exposed to the Meta-meme, the meme about memes...

The lexicon which follows is intended to provide a language for the analysis of memes, meme-complexes, and the social movements they spawn. The name of the person who first coined and defined each word appears in parentheses, although some definitions have been paraphrased and altered.

Sources
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.

Keith Henson, "Memetics", Whole Earth Review #57: 50-55. Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas.

Howard Rheingold, "Untranslatable Words", Whole Earth Review #57: 3-8.


http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMIN.html

Reminds me of Bankei's quip "that's whats known as being had by a dream".