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Human Parasites

     In the year 2004, I decided to move to Cairo, Egypt. Disgusted with the villainous behavior of my country, I no longer felt like living there. Launching a totally unprovoked invasion against another nation, starting a war, was the crime for which the top Nazis were tried and justly hung in 1946. There seemed little chance that such justice would ever reach the criminal thugs responsible in this case.
   
    Arriving in Cairo, I was overwhelmed by immersion in a complex and wholly alien culture. Despite its proximity to Europe, much of the Middle East seemed far more alien than the prosperous nations of the Far East. I found an apartment, a job, and started learning Arabic. I spent all my free time wandering for miles throughout that vast and insufferably polluted megalopolis. Slowly, as I interacted more and more with the inhabitants, I came to understand a mode of social interaction subtly but profoundly alien to any I had known before, a mode unmistakably parasitical. Aside from my co-workers and students, I can honestly say, after careful reflection, and review of my journals from that period, that during the entire year I lived in Cairo I met not a single Egyptian who was not trying to extort money from me. And not just extort money, but to extort every last sub-decimal fraction of a cent from me in every conceivable transaction. Virtuosic scam artists and grandiloquent multilingual touts infested every street. No abyss of shameless, groveling mendacity was left unopened. It appeared as if the only purpose of language, or even of human interaction, was to get money from other people. Why else would one open one’s mouth, or do anything at all, but to achieve some advantage for oneself? “Hey mustache, museum closed now, you come my shop. Good price no hassle. My sister very beautiful. Allobabyrus. Hey Meester.” Since that time I’ve traveled through and lived in several other countries, and while efforts to extort money were always more or less prevalent, I would also constantly meet people genuinely interested in talking to a foreigner. That was absolutely never the case in Cairo. Of course, Egypt has been a premier tourist destination since the 5th century BC, so such a reaction to foreigners is perhaps to be expected.
   
    But that year spent in Cairo introduced into my thought the encysted idea of parasitism as a ruling dynamic for all interactions. There I learned what it felt like to be an independent organism surrounded by swarming legions of parasites trailing behind one, all seeking the minutest aperture in my defenses into which their attachment apparatus could be inserted. The linguistic faculties of the Egyptian touts and parasites were phenomenal. I commonly observed them to switch from English to German to Spanish, to French to Russian, or from Japanese to Chinese to Korean when confronted with an unresponsive potential host. These feats reminded me of the evolutionary chicaneries of viruses seeking to penetrate the cell membranes of their hosts.
   
    While constantly fending off these obnoxious and utterly shameless parasites, I frequently reflected how parasitism was equally present in the West, but took a form more subtle, refined and effective. Instead of trying to extort every last cent in every transaction with their customers, Western business people attempted to establish a relationship that would ensure the customer would return gladly and eagerly of their own will. In a 3rd world economic transaction, both parties try to take total advantage of each other. For a shopkeeper, the ideal result would be that the customer would be totally and shamelessly ripped off, robbed of every last cent for some worthless, shitty piece of useless crap. In contrast the 1st world businessperson seeks to give the customer the best possible deal, in order to ensure repeat transactions. He has in mind his competitors, who are also seeking to exploit the same pool of customers. His efforts to seek his own benefit also aids his customers, while by contrast, the 3rd world businessman’s efforts are entirely at the expense of his customers. The parasitological analog is obvious. The first world economic system has achieved optimal virulence, the 3rd world has not.
   
    I have frequently observed this distinction to play out in every aspect of mass behavior in the 1st and 3rd worlds. For example, in Cairo I worked on the top floor of a crowded indoor mall, accessible only by elevator. Whereas in the West, the people waiting to get on an elevator politely wait for the people already inside it to exit first, the Egyptians would try to crowd into the elevator as soon as the doors opened. The resultant pointless traffic jam meant that the whole process took far longer than it would have in the West. There people had been socialized to behave in a way beneficial first to others, and so also to themselves. A similarly idiotic traffic jam would occur in the Cairo subway when the doors of the train opened.
  
     I observed the clearest example of this while traveling in India. After 10 hours of travel in a bus crammed with humans, goats, engine blocks, huge sacks of unknown cargo, two Isrælis and an apparent corpse, we arrived at a closed railroad crossing. While the train slowly crossed the road, the automobile traffic filled both lanes on either side of the crossing. Each seeking their own individual advantage, the drivers of the various cars, trucks, auto rickshaws, bullock carts, mopeds and busses filled all lanes of the road in both directions for a great distance. The train passed, the gates lifted, and everyone was faced with a pointless impenetrable traffic jam that took hours to clear.
   
    These moronic situations with the elevator or the train crossing spring from the same defective dynamic as the corrupt 3rd world business practices discussed earlier. Both are inhibited and impeded dynamics resultant from individuals seeking their individual advantage without regard to the large scale effects of their actions. In the 1st world, lifelong training and socialization ensure mass efficiency. This is exactly the sort of dynamic we’ve seen in animal parasite systems. In the rich nations, the parasitic social and economic entities that are farming humanity have achieved an optimal virulence, whereas in the poorer nations, those systems are excessively virulent. The horrific pollution, the pointless universal filthiness, and the sheer, blatant obnoxiousness of the automobile are much more obvious in the 3rd world. Here in the 1st world, these parasites have achieved greater prevalence through the inculcation of advanced, unintuitive social practices. Their devastating effects are largely sequestered, and the parasites are free to masquerade as purely benevolent agents upon which our wellbeing is entirely dependent.
   
    But to return to human parasites, we expect that anyone who has spent much time in cities will be familiar with the various conmen and scam artists who abound there. It would be tedious to catalog, and futile to condemn, the innumerable deceits they have invented. Villainous cunning and coyoteish tricksterism are all too well recognized among humans, and it is largely the purpose of this essay to trace the extent of these phenomena far beyond the strictly human, into the realms of matter and unembodied spirit.
   
    Yet before rushing off, let us linger at least to note the very human origin of the word ‘parasite’ itself. The term is from the Greek, and was originally applied to priests. Para—beside; Sitos—food. The verb parasiteo meant both to live at another’s expense, and “to be honored with a seat at the public table.” In Ancient Greece, the temple priests were fed and maintained at the public expense, and the term came to be applied to hangers-on of all sorts. Lawyers, standing armies and politicians have all traditionally been denominated parasites by their detractors. But as priests were the original source of the term parasite, some might see these figures, as well as the endless legions of gurus, swamis, cult leaders, pundits, popes, proselytizers, missionaries, bureaucrats and functionaries as prime examples of human parasites. It would be traditional to view these types as active parasites, and their victims as passive hosts, but that scheme would disguise the true nature of these leaders. Actually, these are mere vehicular meta-parasites being used by invisible agents to gather human hosts. The bloated Baptist preacher, belaboring his flock, the socialist demagogue urging the workers to strike, or the corporate executive, goading his minions to incessant toil, are all merely agents employed by villainous forces of the lower astral to muster the dark energies on which they feed.
   
    The “lower astral”? “Invisible agents”? These terms arrive at our table reeking of third rate metaphysics, the thin broth of credulous dupes. Some few may have personal experience of these matters, others may accept them out of gullible laxity, but I should expect, even hope, that most readers would baulk to accept this heretical divagation into occult territory. In libraries and bookstores, texts treating of Biology and spiritual or paranormal phenomena are kept well apart, as if their respective readers would be loath even to brush shoulders. Books dealing with occult, or with scientific matters, presuppose in their readers a common pool of a priori beliefs. The connection between the natural and “supernatural” worlds has been somewhat neglected in the past 300 years, despite a few isolated efforts. Therefore for skeptical readers I have prepared a justification for this apparently wild leap into the astral realms. The specific point I wish to make here is that abundant evidence exists for a class of non-physical entities, aware of and capable of influencing the physical world.

On the Reality of the Unseen

    When confronting the unexplained, the first question of science must be if, not how. In other words, we must be careful to verify if a purported phenomena happens, before rejecting it because we cannot explain how. In the early 18th century, scientists dismissed the idea of meteorites as an absurd peasant superstition, because they could not conceive how stones could fall out of the sky. The idea violated the concept of the cosmos then prevalent. They would have acquitted themselves much better as scientists, had they actually examined the significant mass of anecdotal evidence available to them, from classical times onward, instead of rushing off at once into theoretical concerns of why the phenomenon could not possibly occur. Similarly, many rejected the heliocentric theory, because they could not conceive of how the earth could be rushing through space without us falling off. Without a clear theory of gravitation, explaining the how of the matter was dubious. Yet had these geocentrists restricted themselves to the if question, they might have avoided an opinion now foolish and risible. A scientist must take care to determine what the reality of a situation is, irregardless of beliefs or theories.
   
    An experiment designed to test whether or not meteorites fall from the sky is almost certain to produce no results. Voltaire might have staked out 100 square miles of land and observed for 50 years without seeing any meteorites fall. Instead, the reality of the situation can only be apprehended by collecting accounts, in other words, from anecdotal evidence. Indeed, there is no reason whatsoever to maintain that all phenomena occurring in our universe are necessarily suited to investigation by laboratory experiment.
   
    I can well remember how this sort of faulty scientistic reasoning led me for many years to deride the belief in astrology. How could inert bodies of gas and rock, millions of miles away in space, possibly affect minute aspects of the personal psychology of every person on earth? Clearly only the most credulous idiot would fall for such patent rubbish. I delighted to viciously calumniate the manifestly foolish belief. Yet when, on a whim, I read parts of a book on astrology, my curiosity was aroused. I began to note the sun signs of acquaintances, and to consider their personalities in that light. Giving up the question of how, and actually condescending to observe the reality of the situation, I was surprised to find that astrology did indeed appear to work. Now I consistently find that system most useful in dealing with people, and not uncommonly can guess people’s signs. Let some future Newton lay bare the laws behind it—I’m content to use it as is.
   
    The field of medicine furnishes further examples of the erroneous thinking of experts, who placed the how question before the if. The germ theory of disease was initially ridiculed by the medical establishment. The untrained patients themselves, however, noticed that people who saw physicians using antiseptic techniques were far less likely to DIE. Why this was the case was of distinctly secondary importance to them, and we should rightly ridicule any who persisted in visiting the septic doctors simply because they could not explain how the new methods worked. In more recent times, repeated, large-scale, double blind experiments have convinced a reluctant Western medical establishment that acupuncture is an effective treatment for a variety of complaints. The lack of any explanation, congruent with Western theory, of how this occurred, long delayed that acceptance.
   
    Another relevant question concerns the survival of consciousness after death. We do know that our conscious awareness and mental activities depend on our brains. Drugs, an injury to the brain, or the removal or decay of brain tissue, all clearly cause changes in thinking. Thus, with the brain entirely gone, how could awareness persist? The issue seems resolved beyond debate at first glance. These theoretical objections appear unassailable. Yet the same trap sprung by the 18th century scientists who rejected meteorites, lies concealed in the undergrowth of this immortal question. The scientist must first examine whether a purported phenomena occurs, before rejecting it because he cannot see how. In this case, the evidence for survival, being the consistent accounts of apparitions, hauntings, near-death experiences, and the repeated instances of veridical information about the deceased given by mediums in carefully controlled settings, all have far more scientific weight than the fact that we cannot explain how they occur. The first are evidence from reality and experience, the other merely an artifact of our thinking.
   
    Many scientists probably reject paranormal phenomena because they are simply unaware of the significant amount of work that has been done in that field over the last century. On the other hand, denying that a purported phenomenon occurs, simply because you have not observed it yourself, is risibly unscientific, and need be given no serious attention. In the matter of survival, it is also crucial to note that not only is consciousness still a mystery, it is a mystery which we have no idea whatsoever how to even begin to address or solve with any of the techniques of science. Even if a scientist were to find the exact molecular or quantum states that were inevitably correlated with consciousness, this would do nothing to explain how consciousness arises in the first place. This crucial point is all too easily overlooked. Saying that consciousness comes from quantum effects in microtubules (Penrose) is no better than saying it comes from the head. The great scientist Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule spent many of his later years working on the problem of consciousness, and it seems to me that the distinction between these two areas of research is important. DNA is a specific molecule that can be mapped. Its structure alone suffices to explain its operation. Consciousness, on the other hand, is a totally different type of problem, which cannot be resolved materially, even if its exact neural correlates were unveiled. Bearing these facts in mind, dismissal of the possibility of survival on neurological grounds alone seems untenable.

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