The Truth Virus : Part I

This is part 1 of the “School of thinking”, beware that it may offend some of you, so please either ignore the post or approach it with open mind!


What if you had a virus in your brain? What if it was a cognitive virus, a kind of cognitive AIDS? What would it do to you? How would it affect your thinking? How did you get infected with the virus? What could you do to cure it?

EVERY TECHNOLOGY has its hackers - those enthusiasts who enjoy exploring the intimate details of the system, cracking the codes and stretching and testing the capabilities of systems. There have been radio hackers and computer hackers and you've no doubt read about the telephone hackers who have ripped-off the phone companies for millions of dollars in free long-distance calls.

Hackers, driven by strong curiosity, often just start off by seeking amusement and showing off their skill but sometimes their antics lead to chaos, fraud and even ... disaster!

The mind boggles at the havoc that can be caused if these viruses spread unchecked. Yet, there is a virus, a brain virus, which already exists in the brains of many humans from preachers to presidents, that makes these computer viruses look wimps by comparison.

This brain virus, or meme, is real. It's seductive and it's very powerful. It's also highly destructive and has been fatal to over 26 million humans in the 20th century. In the brain of a president it could unleash a missile that starts the unthinkable nuclear madness that threatens the very existence of humanity. In the brain of a CEO it can threaten the survival of the business.

And, in YOUR brain???

This brain virus is the Plato Truth Virus (PTV) and chances are almost certain that you are already infected.

When it comes to 'thinking', Plato was the ultimate hacker. At that time, playing around with thinking systems was as much the rage amongst an elite group of men in Greece, as playing around with software systems is the rage amongst the hackers of today. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were the most famous 'thinking hackers' of their day. These hackers of 2500 years ago designed fundamental thinking technologies, systems and viruses that have dominated Western thinking right up to the 20th century, and who knows for how much longer?

Plato's was a Truth Freak, since it was he who invented his 'truth' concept - the strange notion that there is such a thing as 'objective truth'.

Yet this bizarre suggestion has so side-tracked Western philosophers that even today many great minds in Western colleges and universities have still not escaped from Plato's 'truth' idea and their thinking remains infected with this dangerous virus.

It would be a difficult (but worthwhile) project to calculate the cost to humanity and the staggering destruction caused by PTV - Plato's 'truth' virus. It's unlikely that Plato had any idea of the extreme consequences of his invention any more than some of today's hackers will have of theirs. He was just hacking around with thinking.


In cognitive science, the term 'cognitive dissonance' is often used. Cognitive dissonance s interesting because it refers to what happens in your brain when information is presented to it doesn't seem to fit.

For example, just suppose the current state of information in your brain was such that you believed the earth was flat. This, of course, seems naive to us now but not long go most smart people saw things this way. Now, suppose someone called Fred comes along and says, "No, the earth is round!" and tries to explain to you why you should change your view. You would begin to experience cognitive dissonance.

If, though you thought the earth was flat, you were not superstitiously committed to that view you might only experience a mild case of cognitive dissonance. Then, as you followed the evidence Fred presented, you might find your view evolving from “flat earth" to "round earth".

If, on the other hand, you not only believed the earth was flat but you also believed your "flat earth" view was "absolutely right", then you might have a dose of strong cognitive dissonance, so strong that it might be easier to burn Fred at the stake than to change your view from "flat earth" to "round earth".

This kind of thing is not just a silly story but actually does happen. One of the most notorious examples was that of the Father of Modern Science, the brilliant 17th century mathematician, Galilei Galileo.

Galileo had constructed his telescope to show how the earth revolved about the sun and not the sun around the earth. Since Copernicus advanced this hypothesis it had caused great controversy. Galileo now had proof.

When he demonstrated this, many highly intelligent people even refused to look through the telescope, so frightened were they of what they might see. Some people had such a strong dose of cognitive dissonance that they forced Galileo to his knees and made him withdraw his evidence and recant his discovery.

In 1633, Galileo, now 70 years old, sick and completely blind, was forced by the pope to make the arduous journey to Rome to stand trial for 'heresy'. Urban VIII, taking time off from cannibalising the Colosseum to build his Barberini palace, accused Galileo of causing "the greatest scandal in Christendom" for contradicting the Scriptures.

Galileo thought of himself as a devoted Catholic. He argued that the bible was not a scientific text and that we should not expect its 'scientific statements' to be taken literally. He argued that it presents no challenge to faith that both nature and the bible are divine texts and cannot contradict one another.

On 21 June, after a long trial, he was found guilty of heresy, by the Inquisition. Not only that, he was bullied and actually forced into covering up his evidence. The pope demanded that he be tortured if he did not obey: "The said Galileo is in the judgement of the Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine which is false and contrary to the Sacred and Divine Scriptures that the sun is the centre of the world and does not move from east to west, and is not the centre of the world".

Weary and broken, the old man knelt before the pope and made his confession: "I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilea, Florentine, aged seventy years ... must altogether abandon the false opinion that the sun is the centre of the world and immobile".

His trial was a grave and solemn milestone in the history of the Church only surpassed, in poignancy, by the trial of Jesus before Pilate.

The universe which Galileo observed at the end of his telescope totally dwarfed the one that people were seeing with their ordinary vision. He tried to show that it was important to consider the value of new observable phenomena as a way of escaping from weak truths and moving to better ones.

The 17th century, superstitious, ecclesiastical, Roman brainusers experienced such cognitive dissonance from Galileo's discoveries that, to their everlasting shame, they chose to abuse and bully an old man rather than to change their own mind.

The cognitive dissonance endured so strongly that it was only in 1993 (after a 12-year Pontifical Commission!) that, in a belated burst of Christian charity, the Vatican brainusers finally 'forgave' Galileo for letting the sun out of the closet. Better late than never, I suppose.

It may be that some of the material I’m posting will give you a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. At the end of the day, my own goal has always been to generate enough cognitive dissonance to make it interesting reading but not so much as to close your mind.

Galileo's Trial, similar to so many before and after him, was a trial of agents of changes by a bunch of closed-minded, absolute-truth-holding people; they were trials of prejudice against constructive arguments.

Being a Catholic myself, I have a sense of "Mia Culpa", as I feel ashamed of the way the church prejudiced and still prejudice people and ideas; that does not mean that I renounce my believes because of the deeds or judgments that existed and still exist. After all, I think all of us act like Pontus Pilate and Pope Urban VIII in our daily lives; we are all guilty of passing judgment and pontificating about what is right and wrong; it is easier to judge rather than accept, easier to speak rather than listen.

The main problem with fanatics is that they uphold the only truth, a truth that even their religious Master never envisaged in his wildest dreams; the legacy of the absolute truth grows exponentially with every generation until it becomes bigger than the religion itself.