The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, or: Reality comes with consequences

 The human brain is something amazing, especially in how it is capable of imagining and maintaining an inner fantasy world. This is an essential part of what we call 'imagination', and is what allows children to creatively play, inhabiting these fantasy worlds which they may or may not share with other children. It's often assumed that once humans grown into adults, they lose this ability, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Fact of the matter is that society, a culture and a lot of behaviour and opinions with it are a direct consequence of this very same imagination. Just that instead of a momentary whim by a child's mind as they play out a scenario, a society is the consequence of many years of such 'play acting', to the point where it becomes indistinguishable from reality for those inside the scenario. This is also why the playing of children is considered to be an essential part of growing up, allowing them to explore many scenarios and ways of interacting, even as they develop their own personalities.

This is to say that imagination is not necessarily harmful, and societies aren't necessary wrong or harmful. Much like how the fantastic dream worlds which our minds conjure up when we are asleep can turn into a variety of experiences, so too can a society turn into an oddity, something barely or instead fondly remembered, or even a nightmare. Here the imagination of a singular mind is amplified, reflected or extinguished by the other minds that make up a society.


Another property of imagination is that it isn't necessarily connected to reality. A conspiracy theory for example is a type of imagination virus, or 'meme', as in meme theory. This postulates that ideas and concepts can act like biological viruses, spreading to viable hosts, evolving and propagating to the best of their abilities. Some meme viruses can be lethal, others harmless or merely annoying. A harmless meme virus would be something like a popular widget or toy, such as the recent fidget spinner [1] craze. This saw an existing toy suddenly explode in popularity before sinking back into obscurity. This is similar in effect to a biological virus that shows explosive growth, but lack of persistence in a population.

More harmful meme viruses involve a sudden rise in popularity for certain pets, on account of a celebrity owning the same kind of pet. This can lead to the sudden surge in demand causing shortcuts to be taken by less scrupulous breeders, resulting in a massive spike in genetic defects in those 'pure-bred' (i.e. incestuous) dogs. Long-lived versions of these viruses can lead to 'cultural behaviour' that for example casts certain groups of people into a certain light. For example that of menstruating women being 'unclean' and being forced to leave the house during that period.

Finally, the most harmful virus that thrives exceptionally well in some imaginations are those involving conspiracies. This one is most insidious because these do not concern a fad or short-lived hype, or even something that can be considered to be 'relatively harmless'. In the case of a conspiracy virus, the affected person begins to lose the ability to separate fantasy from reality. Starting often with some nagging doubts, the person finds themselves slipping more and more until their thinking patterns have been reordered that no (virus-caused) dissonance occurs any more.


The fun thing about an imagination is that it's, well, imaginary. Just as a child can imagine themselves for a brief moment to be a pirate, a prince or princess, or the owner of a retail store, they too know that none of it is real. They merely enjoy playing those roles. It would only become problematic if they truly believed that they truly were those characters.

This permanence of imagination is something which becomes especially problematic in the case of an urgent situation, where reality clashes with the imaginary world that's being kept alive in the minds of one or more people. For many years people have been play-acting out today's and yesterday's societies, establishing societies that are primarily based around exploitation, as that aggressive model works well for survival.

This means exploitation of the earth's biosphere and other natural resources, of other human beings and groups, and even oneself. This is the imaginary world which we have created for ourself. A world in which we deem ourselves to be masters over this planet, and goad others into believing that if they exploit themselves a little bit more, they too can one day live the wealthy lifestyle of those who were born or adopted into wealthy families.

A world in which we assume that we can just cut down forests and further encroach onto the last remaining habitats of wild animals, and not suffer any consequences. Yet as Ebola [2], SARS, MERS and now SARS-CoV-2 have shown us, this is a delusion. We are not the gods we see ourselves as. We'll keep stumbling over new natural reservoirs [3] of new and fascinating new diseases that have the potential to turn into the next pandemic.


Part of fundamentally fixing the problems that led us to yet another pandemic within two decades time does involve taking stock our collective imaginations and the many viruses that dwell inside them. It's this viral ecosystem within our imaginations that have led us to these societies of greed, suffering and exploitation. They are the reason why some people truly believe that electromagnetic radiation can cause diseases or cancer, why genetic engineering is deemed too risky but mutagenics totally fine, or why even after a vaccine becomes available against SARS-CoV-2 and the associated COVID-19 disease, we'll still have to somehow deal with a range of other patients, ranging from those who believe that vaccines cause cancer, cause autism, add trackers to our body, contain toxic aluminium and/or mercury, to a wide spectrum of other conspiracy viruses.

Maybe that'll be the real challenge this century. After tackling biological viruses, maybe this is our wake-up call to address imagination viruses. Because although they only exist in our imaginations, sometimes our imaginations become more real than reality itself.


Maya


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidget_spinner
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir