Pandemics of ideas

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We offer a review by Eduard Kaeser, Physicist and Dr. in Philosophy. He works as a freelance lecturer and publicist. In 2018, the German publisher Schwabe-Verlag published “The Trojan Horses of Our Time. Critical Essays on Digitalization.” A summary of his thoughts appeared in the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Zurich, 28.11.2020.

Introductory remarks by the editor

One must distinguish, in the order of ideas, the plane of the exact and experimental sciences, which, although they may have errors in some respect, have always been overcome by new verifications. And this in a dispassionate way, because the objective standard that supports the edifice of this knowledge is the very objects of these sciences, which, through the scientific principle of evidence, have been purifying themselves, allowing the enormous scientific and technological progress that we are all grateful for.

On the other hand, in the order of philosophical, political and economic ideas is much more difficult to formulate laws, because the matter has more to do with art than with science. Thus it is difficult to define scientific laws, which are the result of irrefutable evidence, as is the case in the exact and experimental sciences, as stated above. Thus it is understandable how a highly educated and cultured people could have been contaminated by the ‘pandemic’ of Nazism, whose ideological starting point is analogous to Marxism and to so many ideologies that today are trying to impose, such as genderism, the non-existence of truth, the primacy of pleasure, etc.

The censorship imposed by the large social networks reminds us of the scene in Don Quixote, where the priest and the barber throw into the fire the books that they thought had driven the nobleman of La Mancha mad. When an ideology is established in political and military power, censorship is immediately imposed ‘manu militari’. We see manifestations of this attitude in the censorship of social networks and in the absurd censorship favored by the EU in relation to words, concepts, unnecessary prohibitions imposed by the coronavirus, etc.

Thoughts can be analogously as contagious as viruses and bacteria. While biological epidemics are quite undesirable, the same cannot be said of intellectual epidemics. Take, for example, psychoanalysis: let us, with complete freedom of thought, consider some very interesting phenomena.

We are all receptive to certain ideas and immune to others. Once infected, we can, after a certain incubation period, infect others. Let us take an example from the beginning of the last century, psychoanalysis. It is, in the scathing words of Karl Kraus, the mental illness that thinks it is therapy. Freud’s writings were carriers of the infectious matter that infected Jung, Abraham or Ferenczi. These, after an incubation period, in turn became hosts of the psychoanalytic virus. In the process, Jung developed rather an acquired resistance to the disease, whereas the resistance of the Viennese medical profession probably corresponded to an innate immunity.

The history of psychoanalysis in its first phase reads like the chronicle of an epidemic. Analogous things can be said about Newton’s mechanics, Darwin’s theory of evolution, Cantor’s set theory, Keynes’ theory of employment. And they are by no means limited to exact science, but also apply to Kant, Marx or Nietzsche. But, where the epidemic process has been changing the world we find it in the order of philosophical ideas.

What makes an idea so virulent, is it that there are many “super-spreaders” in certain intellectual circles? These inquiries are revealing, because the explanation involves looking at scientific progress from an epidemiological point of view. The longevity of an idea usually means the dominance of scientific “mandarins” and their disciples in a certain field of knowledge, who counteract the spread of alternative and competing ideas. Herd immunity, so to speak, is formed by one scientific school against another. According to Max Planck’s famous quote, the exact sciences advance from one funeral to another. In other words, new theories can often only gain momentum when the eminences of a discipline retire and the immunity of their established ideas diminishes.

How do bad ideas behave?

So far we have talked about good ideas. What about bad ideas? That is, we can certainly speak of a “pathogenicity” of ideas. The question is of great importance. We see how “contaminated” content – misinformation, crackpot theories, rumors – literally spread pandemically in social networks.

Let’s make an analogy here as well. In a pandemic disease, multiple strains of pathogens often compete for dominance and survival in a host population. Misplaced worldviews, half-truths and falsehoods can thus be considered intellectual “pathogens.” They are in constant competition with “healthy” ideas. They all compete for attention, i.e., they seek contagious hosts. A healthy population could be defined by the fact that in it “healthy” ideas prevent “pathogenic” ones from spreading widely. However, if the intellectual health of a population breaks down and loses its unity, dividing into closed subpopulations, the viruses of “pathogenic” ideas can find their niches in which they can continue to exist. Social networks are the ideal breeding ground for these virus strains, thus fostering an intellectual segregation of terrifying proportions, especially with regard to truth and the Judeo-Christian cultural principles upon which the greatness of the West has been built.

The spread of the virus of opposition

Today, we are infected by the plot virus. And it seems that its reproduction rate is high, which suggests that the virus is a product of social networks. But it is very old, because it always recycles the same narrative pattern, which can be condensed in one sentence: epidemics always have their culprits.

For example, in 1321, during the leprosy epidemic in France, the sick themselves were accused of conspiring to spread the disease. In his book “The Witches’ Sabbath,” historian Carlo Ginzburg says that the alleged leprous conspirators spread poisonous powders in wells, springs and rivers to infect the healthy. The sick were arrested, imprisoned, tortured and burned. There is nothing new under the sun today either. The plot pattern about the Sars-CoV-2 virus is updated with China’s PC, US intelligence agencies, with the Bill Gates Foundation, Big Pharma or the obligatory Alpha Centauri invaders, depending on preference.

Viral garbage

Let’s go back to making an analogy: the excrement of large networks is a pandemic intellectual virus. Its epidemiology is based on three basic principles: 1) Producing ‘bullsheet’ is easy, while eliminating it is disproportionately more difficult. 2) “Proving” bullshit requires no intelligence, while disproving it requires a lot. 3) Viral ‘bullsheet’ spreads faster than any attempt to correct and refute it. Therefore, against social media incubators, there is no “vaccine” in sight against bullsheet.

Therefore, we must look at the current situation with a stoic attitude. Since their discovery, microbes have been regarded primarily as “pollution”, as contaminants and carriers of germs of evil: a biological filth that must be eliminated. The same can be said of intellectual filth, of nonsense. Stoicism now means understanding the enormous current significance of the educational and cultural task.