There is a fascinating new documentary about the parasite Toxoplasma Gondii, dubbed the “zombie bug”, which is seen spore-bombing ants with its own “seeds of destruction”, in order to perpetuate its existence. The fungus has no brain, no central nervous system, no “will”. But it seems that having such things is not necessary in order to control these very same systems in other organisms.
Interestingly, in humans, toxoplasma is found to make female IQ’s higher and male IQ’s lower. Not that IQ means anything, but what does mean something, is that all observed infected organisms exhibited less risk awareness, and as well, became less afraid of things which could easily kill them. For instance, in rats (with brains similar to ours), once infected by the parasite, not only did their fear of cats disappear, but they became sexually attracted to them. This condition was called “Fatal Feline Attraction”. The rats’ brains, flooded with the “everything’s chill” neurotransmitter serotonin (much like those of millions of human beings), were completely controlled by the parasite, and thus, turned them into an easy meal for every predator. Scary ramifications here.
Hosts become compliant to the cause of propagating the parasite. Fearless in the parasite’s endeavor to spread. The metaphor here for what females are encouraged to do (in role model positions) is so obvious. And perhaps by no coincidence, the repercussions of the spreading of the whore and the spore are quite literally identical.
This single celled micro-organism is mind-blowing in its elegant simplicity. It has no brain, yet flawlessly devours and controls the brains of other organisms.
Accessing the human ability to see/reason into arguably more expansive universal arenas is a “smart” end game. Parasites don’t have hands and brains and nervous systems. Imagine if they did. It would be like a Tyrannosaurus Rex having those dino-grippers you see at country fairs.
They use the host server – its CNS and CPU – against the host to serve the parasitic end game. To control individuals like an ant colony, in order to serve the higher goal – to create as many contributing components to singularity as possible. To – in other words – make the entropy of the hive – the quantum singularity of the collective controlled components (minds) – more stable.
This would be good for the hive and perhaps, for the survivors within it. If the parasite is in fact the dominant species, then perhaps it should be programming the software and thus, re-building the hardware. The transhumanist community would dig this, I think.
But what would this transformation look like?
Would it look like the zombie ant colony in the CBC documentary? Individuals unwittingly committing suicide to serve the parasite?
In the battle between free will human consciousness, and blind will parasitic a-consciousness, the battlefield is the mind of the host. And perhaps the deciding factor as to whether or not we will keep our free will, will depend entirely on how much we wish to keep it.
Photo Credit:
Screenshot from CBC The Nature of Things, “Invasion of the Brain Snatchers“
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