The Gathering Darkness

There is plenty of science about hardwired modules in the brain. For example, there are several books about people with localized brain damage, say because of trauma, where the effect is to take away some weird tiny little ability. Like “The ability to recognize faces”, “the ability to notice cheating”, etc. Plus we can watch the brain with imaging systems while people think. Plus we can test people and find specific, limited areas of irrationality. – Patri Friedman

We live in an age of evil magic – S. A. Nelson

Evil is real, even if magic is not. By “evil magic”, my friend S. refers to coercive magic, any kind of attempt to forcibly destroy a human being’s free capacity to choose. This evil desire has a long history. The naive observer, fed on sentimental stories, sees a “love spell” as something frivolous, harmless, even romantic. The truth is quite different:

“… I deposit this binding spell with you, chthonian gods — Pluto and Kore…who holds the keys to those in Hades, and chthonic spirits (and) gods, and those who suffered an untimely death, boys and maidens, year by year, month by month, day by day, night by night, hour by hour. I adjure you, all spirits in this place, to assist the ghost. Rouse yourself for me, ghost, whoever you are, whether male or female, and go into every place, into every quarter, into every house, and bind Kopria, … the hair of whose head you have, for Ailourion, …that she may not submit to vaginal nor anal intercourse, nor gratify another youth or another man except Ailourion only,…and that she may not even be able to eat nor drink nor ever get sleep nor enjoy good health nor have peace in her soul or mind in her desire for Ailourion…” (Part of a spell, or defixio found inscribed on a lead tablet, Egyptian, 2nd to 4th century AD written in demotic Greek. From Traditions of Magic In Late Antiquity

It is obvious enough that love has nothing to do with this sort of spell; it might more accurately be described as a rape spell. The reader is informed that:

The extant recipe calls for the preparation of two voodoo dolls — of an armed male and a naked female, down on her knees with her hands tied behind her back — and for the penetration of the female figurine with 13 copper needles, in key points of her body. (One of the other defixiones of this type indeed was found together with a clay female figurine, with the needles still sticking out of her body.) Both the (now lost) figurine and the lead tablet (folded, to judge from the cracks) were deposited in the grave of someone who had died violently or prematurely, so that the restless ghost — “whoever you are, whether male or female” — would search for Kopria and “deliver” her into Ailourion’s hands. To help the ghost in its task, something intimately connected with the victim — in the present case, some of Kopria’s hair — was attached to the figurine. The mention of the protagonists’ mothers, rather than fathers, is the normal procedure in such instances, presumably because one’s mother is known for certain, while one’s real father is not.

It is not necessary to actually believe in the efficacy of such a spell to recognize the malign intent, the combination of hatred and ugly desire that anyone would resort to such means must have felt. Writing on lead tablets does not really command “the cthonian gods” and the restless dead to torment a helpless victim until she is driven to submit – but whoever commissioned the work thought it did, and acted on that supposed knowledge. S. A. Nelson points out that the attitude is exactly that of the modern day stalker, who puts all the blame for his rejected advances on his beloved/victim, and who seeks both possession and revenge.

No one in late antiquity who cast such a spell could be described as innocent. But I think that modern day would-be sorcerers can often be described as innocent – fatally innocent, in that they do not understand the full moral implications of the pseudo-scientific magic they espouse. Take “memetics” for example – exactly how does it differ from the theory and practice of defixiones? The proponents of this pseudo-science believe that word-sequences can infect human thought, that these word-sequences can propagate themselves by reprogramming human brains. For “memes” read “spells”. Could the “restless dead” do any better?

Memetics denies human choice, human personality in the same way that the defixiones deny or denigrate the possibility of genuine love between two human beings. The significant aspect of memetics is not, however, the crude attempts to denigrate rival opinions as a kind of mental infection, (mostly connected with religious belief) but with the largely unspoken ambition to reprogram the beliefs of others. Under “Memetic engineering” at Wikipedia we find this bland definition:

Memetic Engineering is the process of developing memes, through meme-splicing and memetic synthesis, with the intent of altering the behavior of others.

If not an age of evil magic, then an age of evil would-be magicians. And yet, doesn’t it come to the same thing in the end? The intent is the same. I do not believe that human beings can be reprogrammed by “memes”, any more than I believe that they can be compelled by “Pluto and Kore and the restless dead.” But in 2nd century AD Egypt, people believed in the reality of coercive magic, and the terror and suffering caused by this belief must have been considerable.

Belief in the new pseudo-scientific coercive magic of “memetics” is the same sort of hopeless superstition. Widespread acceptance of devil theories (as David Stove has explicitly called Richard Dawkins’ memetics theory) can lead to nothing good.

Patri Friedman is certainly an innocent. The reality of evil seems distant from him, and the darker implications of the fashionable pseudo-science he plays with escape him, because his motivations are not malign. In an Livejournal comments exchange, Friedman defends his belief in magical brain-programming modules (not, in this case, specifically “memetic”) by claiming that “we can watch the brain with imaging systems while people think.”

Belief in MRI imaging as the key to human consciousness is one of the new higher superstitions, along with personality tests like the Enneagram and the Myers-Briggs (both of which have intellectual pedigrees about on the same level as the defixiones).

The true potential for terror and suffering implicit in these pseudo-sciences has not yet, I think, been fully realized. The Myers-Briggs test is an annoyance when seeking employment – but one could argue that any employer stupid enough to hire people on the basis of a test loosely based on the “work” of Carl “I believe in flying saucers” Jung is probably not long for solvency anyway. The Enneagram, that horrible thing, was directly responsible for one of the worst experiences of my life, but that’s over and done with, now. These are minor evils, to be sure – although they contribute to the inexorable trend in modern thought, the denigration of the human individual by pigeonholing him into arbitrary and inadequate classification systems. But the MRI superstition is a slightly different matter, using as it does a legitimate clinical tool in the service of pseudo-scientific claptrap. Perhaps a story I heard recently might explain the difference a little more clearly.

I was talking to a friend of mine a few days ago when the subject of insanity happened to come up. I don’t know exactly how we got started on this topic, but as we were driving back to Alethea’s, he told me a story about someone he’d known a while back, someone who had started to hear voices.

“Nobody knew him very well” my friend said “We think he might have come from Germany, but nobody knew for certain.” What was for certain was that he kept hearing the voices in his head, and that they kept telling him to do violent things. He went through the usual routine of therapy, I suppose, but his was one of those cases where nothing seemed to work, and where, finally, the only alternative left was a radical procedure. Since he had no family that anyone knew of, another person who knew him signed off on permission for the therapy.

The therapy, as described by my friend, involved placing the patient in a MRI scanning machine, and identifying areas of his brain that became active (supposedly) when he began hearing voices. Thus identified, these areas of his brain were destroyed with electrical current (or possibly some other procedure).

After this “therapy” the patient returned to the world. “You could tell he was damaged” my friend said “like he’d had a severe brain injury. It was real obvious.” A necessary price to pay for the elimination of the voices, a drastic but unavoidable sacrifice, like cutting off a limb swollen with gangrene?

Well, except that within a year, the voices in his head came back anyway. It had all been for nothing. And the voices were bad enough, insistent enough, unbearable enough that the patient decided on his own therapy. This self-administered therapy consisted of plunging a blade into his stomach and disembowelling himself.

“After almost 30 years, Benedict Carey writes in the article linked above,“researchers have not developed any standardized tool for diagnosing or treating psychiatric disorders based on imaging studies.” One wonders if the recipient of the benefits of the higher superstition, the benefits of the new “science” of brain imaging, had ever had occasion to read those measured words, or contemplate their meaning, or even to regret what he had exchanged in return for a false promise – as the steel sliced through his intestinal wall. Probably not.

“Damned nonsense – and nonsense that can damn.”– G. K. Chesterton.