"There's a secret cabal of beings that are making my life personally miserable" is already a common enough position that cyclically occurs in human history every hundred years or so that I don't think it's a fiction. I don't think it's an untenable premise to suspect that toxoplasmosis pandemics are cyclically-occuring in humans already and are responsible for revolutionary periods and/or imperialism.
What people might find unpalatable is the idea that parasitic infection could determine so fundamentally political beliefs and ideology, but consider that the idea of not cleaning your hands directly led to disease was considered literal insanity (see the tragic history of Ignaz Semmelweis) prior to germ theory. Sometimes it's the smallest catalysts that cause the largest changes. For the want of a nail...
“Cats began their unique relationship with humans 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, the geographic region where some of the earliest developments in human civilization occurred ”
Surely causation. Farmers store crops which attract rodents which attract felines. Wild cats that mind their manners do better in this environment. Eventually wild cats become the kitty cats we know today.
That wild cats infected humans so that humans would develope agriculture that would attract rodents for the cats to eat? That hypothesis doesn't seem very plausible...
Cat infects human A, who feeds cat in a fit of unprecedented affection. Human B sees another human with a cat and wants to be their friend. Repeat until cat friend puddle is too large for local flora to sustain. Human Z invents agriculture, attracting rats. I'm not sure this is terribly plausible, but I do have a cat on my lap.
> Wolves infected with a common parasite are more likely than uninfected animals to lead a pack, according to an analysis of more than 200 North American wolves1. Infected animals are also more likely to leave their home packs and strike out on their own.
> Although under-studied, penguin populations, especially those that share an environment with the human population, are at-risk due to parasite infections, mainly Toxoplasmosis gondii. The main subspecies of penguins found to be infected by T. gondii include wild Magellanic and Galapagos penguins, as well as blue and African penguins in captivity.[78] In one study, 57 (43.2%) of 132 serum samples of Magellanic penguins were found to have T. gondii. The island that the penguin is located, Magdalena Island, is known to have no cat populations, but a very frequent human population, indicating the possibility of transmission.
HERZOG: Dr. Ainley, is there such thing as insanity among penguins? I try to
avoid the definition of insanity or derangement. I don't mean that a penguin
might believe he or she is Lenin or Napoleon Bonaparte, but could they just go
crazy because they've had enough of their colony?
AINLEY: Well, I've never seen a penguin bashing its head against a rock. They
do get disoriented. They end up in places they shouldn't be, a long way from
the ocean.
HERZOG: These penguins are all heading to the open water to the right.
But one of them caught our eye, the one in the center.
He would neither go towards the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice,
nor return to the colony. Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight
towards the mountains, some 70 kilometers away. Dr. Ainley explained
that even if he caught him and brought him back to the colony, he would
immediately head right back for the mountains. But why?
One of these disoriented, or deranged, penguins showed up at the New Harbor
diving camp, already some 80 kilometers away from where it should be.
The rules for the humans are do not disturb or hold up the penguin. Stand still
and let him go on his way. And here, he's heading off into the interior of the
vast continent.
With 5, 000 kilometers ahead of him, he's heading towards certain death.
> consider that the idea of not cleaning your hands directly led to disease was considered literal insanity (see the tragic history of Ignaz Semmelweis) prior to germ theory
I was under the impression that it wasn't so much that people considered the idea insane, as that they hated Semmelweis and were therefore strenuously opposed to anything associated with him.
There is the idea that anyone that wants to be a leader probably shouldn't be a leader. These are the types of people who crave being in positions of authority over others. They'll step on anyone they need to in order to get the the top. They might be the leader, but they usually aren't necessarily the types of people that are looking out for the best interests of the people they lead.
I was once part of a department that was so well-managed and functional that I couldn't quite believe it. Then when time came choose a new department head, someone told me that they had always specifically avoided people who wanted to lead the department for the job.
Good policy. In worker owned enterprises that are run democratically the owner/employees elect their managers from the ranks. They act as manager for a term and then go back to their original position after the next election. Keeps everyone based in reality.
Decades ago, the Boston University Free Press (the alternative views newspaper) was managed in this manner. My buddy ended up running the paper for a year because he was the least political, most liked guy working at the place. He just wanted people to be happy. After a year, he was no longer happy and was glad to give up the job.
The flaw is that it forces someone into a role they do not want to fulfil, that could see the occupant become resentful of those around them and act out of spite.
The short answer is there is no perfect model, people will always be people.
I somehow expect that person wouldn't have become spiteful _just_ because of the election, so wouldn't get elected in the first place... but yeah, we only have bad or worse solutions.
There's a difference between "I don't want to do this job", and "I don't want to do this job, but it needs to be done, and apparently everyone else thinks I'm the best fit for it. As much as I now hate you all, I'll do it, and may God have mercy on your souls."
I've been told several times that I become scarily competent at anything I hate, far in excess of those things that make me happy or bring me joy.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't discount disgust or aversion to something or it's lack as a disqualification to manage that thing. Quite to the contrary, they may be just the person aware enough of the thing in question to reliably manage it. I'll take a candidate who can explain at length why they hate that job over the most eager "this'll be great" candidate ever.
I'll just be realistic about my assessment of their tenure, and the compensation offered, and try really hard to figure out what they actually want before pulling the trigger on the hire.
> There is the idea that anyone that wants to be a leader probably shouldn't be a leader. These are the types of people who crave being in positions of authority over others.
Which is why it's helpful to have as many (what I refer to as…) "power traps" in a society as possible: coaching, teaching, leading an HOA, leading a PTA, etc.
I have nothing against these endeavors, you must understand, but my view is that a person spending time acting as a judge for a dog show is less likely to pursue becoming an actual judge.
There's also the Dunning-Kruger Effect; Incompetent or dumb people don't recognize their own failings and assume they are geniuses. Smart and competent people know their own deficiencies and assume they're limited or dumb.
so if you feel like you are limited/dumb are you actually smart or does realising that loop back to you actually really being dumb. seems like a catch 22
With DK, the underlying model is that people only improve when they see their flaws. People who are very good at seeing their own flaws improve their performance, but tend to think they are doing worse than they are.
In my view whether or not that makes you "smart" or "dumb" depends on what you do with the insight. As Ira Glass writes: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."
Culture is emergent behavior or a description of human behavior, it's not an external agent that becomes attached to humans, so the analogy really doesn't work.
Culture is literally an external agent passed on by our family, friends, peers, institutions, companies, and organizations. It is and always has been a meme. The analogy is sound.
It's not an external agent, it's an emergent property of humankind. I don't find memes a compelling idea, but regardless, memes are not viruses and culture is neither a virus nor a virus-like external agent.
So the analogy is very forced and doesn't really work.
Hehe, gotcha. I always forget about this meaning of "culture" in English, since the word we use in Spanish for "lab culture" is different ("cultivo"... closer to English "crop"!).
Futurama made an episode kinda like this. But it's not so dystopic: if anything it kinda made me want to eat an egg salad sandwich from a vendomat in the bathroom of a truck stop!
"All the leaders are secretly infected by parasites".
Sounds like interesting sci fi movie premise.