Virus

We have a ginormous amount of cells in our body, something like ten-to-the-fourteenth-power, which is, simply, a lot. About a hundred million million, if my memory of exponential notation is correct. But anyway, all these cells are basically similar. They're all surrounded by a wall to protect all sorts of factories and processing facilities for making protein and keeping everything functioning in top shape. All have nuclei, analagous to the brain of the cell. With the exception of red blood cells, every cell in your body - brain, bone, heart, whatever - every cell has a nucleus, and each nucleus contains DNA, which is the genetic blueprint for the type of creature you are. In humans, such information is encoded in our 46 chromosomes.

However, inside you this very minute, hostile entities much, much smaller than cells are attacking your cells. They're called viruses. They lack that cell wall, and most of the internal structures of your body's cells. What they are, basically, is just a floating piece of DNA wrapped in a protein with a little hook. The DNA is so rudimentary that it is debatable whether they are living or not.

What do viruses do? Well, they make you sick. How? A virus uses that protein hook to rip open the wall of a cell in your body and invades, not unlike Visigoths breaching the concrete defenses of a Roman citadel. Then, the virus uses the defending cell's own replicating structures to produce copies of itself. Soon, thousands and thousands of new viral chunks are floating about the cell, and eventually the cell wall bursts, disbursing the little monsters to attack other cells in your body. A full-blown invasion leads to symptoms of illness of some kind.

Why am I telling you this?

Recently, in my search for weirdity across the Internet, I came across the concept of a cognitive virus. A little monster that attacks our thinking, replicates itself inside our thoughts, and eventually produces only copies of itself. The idea is intriguing, and, I have to admit, a little off-putting. I first ran across the idea in a philosophy forum but saw that there were other web sites that bought into the premise. Let me describe it, though with the caveat I'm not sure if there's anything of merit here or whether its pure unadulterated nonsense.

This anonymous person's manifesto was about something called the Platonic Truth Virus. It's simply this: Plato's insistence on an objective truth has tainted philosophy for the past 2,500 years. Since hundreds of philosophers over the centuries have placed Plato and his student, Aristotle, in a position of reverance and honor, our systematic thinking has been tainted by deference to the two ancient Greek thinkers. The Church alone, in Aquinas' synthesis of Aristotelian doctrine with Church teaching, is one of the biggest infected bodies of this cognitive virus. The author of this piece, without giving any supporting information, claims (somewhat hysterically, I believe) that the virus is responsible for 26 million deaths this century alone.

I have intense difficulty disbelieving an objective truth. Something must be true; indeed, even if you hold a philosophy that there-is-no-Truth you're holding that up as Truth. It's a very dicey problem, one that a small part of me think's really isn't a problem and another small part thinks there's something worth investigating there. However, as far as the Platonic Truth Virus goes, the idea in itself intrigues me, but I think it needs to be applied to an area other than truth. Or perhaps I need to read from someone different just what the essence of this idea really is. The temptation is that you can claim anyone who doesn't believe what you believe is succumbing to the virus, and that's the impression I got perusing the original forum entries. Still, I'll keep the concept in the back of my mind, terribly infected by the little monsters as it may be ...