Being able to control another person’s mind sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Star Wars Jedi ‘mind touch’ and Star Trek’s Vulcan ‘mind-meld’ come to mind. However, real forms of manipulation also come to mind: propaganda, disinformation, much advertising, and brainwashing implant ideas or conceptions in the minds of others.
The process of hijacking the thoughts of an independent organism by a foreign agent shares much with virology. Each process leverages the needs and vulnerabilities of the host to hack into the critical system.
The human mind is pulled in two directions as it processes information. First, we need to organize and retain ideas. This subjects us to what McGill University psychologist and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin describes as belief perseverance. In A Field Guide to Lies [2016] Levitin describes it as follows.
Research reports say we should eat a low-fat, high-carb diet and so we do. New research undermines the earlier finding-quite convincingly- yet we are reluctant to change our eating habits. Why? Because on acquiring the new information, we tend to build up internal stories to help assimilate the knowledge. [p. 206]
On one hand, this is a good thing because we might otherwise have to reinvent things or derive rules and laws every time we need them.
On the other hand, we also tend to latch onto new information that we think will serve a higher purpose than an earlier idea. In Word Myths: debunking urban legends [2004], author and founder of wordorigins.org David Wilton describes how urban legends form and replace ideas with new and crucially false information. He notes that people like to tell stories for practical reasons, for the social pleasure that comes from gossiping, for profit, and for devious purposes.
Finally, the most compelling reasons for telling these tales is that they explain mysteries. That they give false or undocumented explanations is beside the point. To say that something is unknown is profoundly unsatisfying. So, if an explanation is not available, we will create one.
In effect, we are sometimes the agents of our own brainwashing. On one hand, that is a good thing; we need to be able to check our assumptions, think critically, and form new ideas. Fortunately, the brain is able to organize and reorganize its synaptic pathways in response to learning, growth, experience, and trauma. This is our biological endowment of neuroplasticity.
On the other hand, that endowment, combined with one’s willingness to latch onto unwarranted ideas can be a bad thing. Wilton cites an urban legend that term “rule of thumb” originated in English Common Law to allow men to beat their wives if the stick was no thicker than their thumb. This was widely reported in the late 20th century as evidence of the brutal, misogynist nature of Western civilization. Wilton traced all known legal and literary references to the phrase as far back as 1608. He found that the first ever reference to “rule of thumb” in connection with wife beating – or any beating – was in the 1976 book Battered Wives, by Del Martin – who was then coordinator of the National Organization for Women Task Force on Battered Women. She did not actually claim there was a connection between the phrase and the law. She was only being metaphoric. However, Wilton notes, “within a year, feminist writings were touting this as the origin of the phrase.” (p. 43) By 1982, the US Commission on Civil Rights was citing it as factual.
Regardless of the motivation to advance a cause, the tension between belief perseverance and the social drive to mythologize and gossip constitutes a form of mind-control.
This brings us back to the parallels between the social mind-hijacking process and virological cell-hijacking process. A virus will inject DNA, which is a chemical, molecular information code, into the reproductive system of the host cells. The viruses give the host instructions to ‘make this’. The host complies, as if it is hearing its own inner voice. In fact, the virus has learned to mimic that voice perfectly. As belief perseverance and urban myths affect our minds, so do viruses affect our immune systems.
The parallels between mind- and organism- hijacking are central to the Torah’s Pashiyot Tazria and Metzora. They describe the infections that could manifest on skin, clothing, or even houses. Rabbinic tradition identifies them as Tzaraat – a disease of those who gossip. Tzaraat can be removed via a kind of spiritual-plasticity, or rewiring, through a process of purification.
The Parshiyot give excruciating details for diagnosing Tzaraat. The purification involves the seclusion of the infected person or object. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch points out that two seemingly contradictory words are used to describe these infections: נגע – i.e., a touch that comes from without; and צרעת – which is related to זרע [planted within] and סרח [to rot]. Both of the latter refer to a growth or infection from within. This paradox of spiritual contagion is resolved in the study of biological contagion. The virus can infect the cell, plant its seed, and have it grow. Fungi can attach to the host and feed on its flesh.
The equivalence between a foreign virus manipulating our cells and toxic information influencing our decisions is not to be taken lightly. We might believe that we have not been brainwashed because we are too smart to be taken in by fake news. However, as biological and social creatures, we fool ourselves by nature. There’s always an opening for others to get in and poison us.
This week the largest media defamation lawsuit in US history was settled. We might want to believe that only one network, political philosophy, or ideology is toxic. We should know better. Truth came to light because of the powerful laws of discovery in such a case. Such legal tools act like the microscope that reveals the subculture lurking under the more visible veneer of civil society.
In much the same way as we have trouble seeing germs, we may have trouble fending off the information viruses that are released into our environment with regularity. It is only a short distance in each step from making up silly stories, to sharing gossip, to spreading urban myths, to institutionalizing hatred against marginalized groups. The vectors lead directly from, “did you hear about what Shimon said about Levi?” to the ever-present myths that Jews control the banks and media.
The Torah focuses on interpersonal relations, not on media companies. It treats gossip the way it manages a sudden skin infection – isolation. During the pandemic, we all learned that viruses can break out in one place and quickly go global. Information is the same. Before you hit send, post, share, first be sure it should be shared. Remember that in today’s environment, all information can become public and permanent. Treat everything you say or send as if it will go viral. Be sure that unleashing that vector is the right move.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rosenblatt and Dr. Terry Neiman
