Decades ago, I read about a scientific study. I've been trying to find out more about it, but to no avail. Here's how the study went: the scientists experimented with planaria, the flatworms. It's important to remember here that planaria are able to regenerate themselves completely, including their brains. If you cut a planaria in half, both halves will regrow and you'll end up with two planarias. Well, the scientists trained one group of planaria to associate red light with pain. They would flash the red light and zap the planaria with electricity. The planaria eventually learned to curl up into a ball when they just saw the red light. The scientists then ground the planaria to a pulp and fed this pulp to another group of planaria that were not exposed to either the red light or the zapping. When the scientists then exposed this group to red light, they too would curl up into a ball. They gained the knowledge of the planaria they ate. As I said, I've been trying to find this study, but I wasn't able to. Perhaps somebody would like to replicate it?
In other news, I'm convinved all that "junk DNA" is not junk but is probably storage for epigenetics. After all, in electronic circuits you could say memory circuits are "junk circuits", compared to circuits that actually do something. So many problems in biomedicine's understanding of genes stem from the fact the science is buit from experiments on procariotes, and extrapolating those things to multicellular eucariotes. As a general rule, procariotes don't have junk DNA. But then again, as a general rule, procariotes live by reproducing. Many of them don't even have the ability to *move*, meaning they are nothing more than self-copying machines thrown about. It's a fundamentally different mode of existance compared to multicellular eucariotes.
One other thing when talking about epigenetics. In human conception, the DNA of the sperm gets demethylated, but not the DNA from the ovum. However, when the ovum is artificially fertilized (by inserting the sperm DNA IIRC), both DNAs get demethylated. So, if blood memories are real, people who stem from in-vitro fertilization, the ones who don't stem from sperm and ova mating, are probably going to have all sorts of disordered blood memories, or none at all. If you wanted to test this hypothesis, they would be a good starting point. ;)
I think I might have heard of the flatworm study. Rings a bell.
Fascinating speculation about IVF.
But, I suspect we look too much at DNA. Michael Levin’s work on bioelectric fields indicate that a lot of the large scale morphological patterns are actually carried at that level. So genetic data might not be exclusively, or even primarily, chemical in nature.
Not familiar about Levin's work, I'll look it up. Found some article in Cell (Bioelectric signaling: Reprogrammable circuits
underlying embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer). Seems legit but in this article he's talking about multicell-level coordination, steming from membrane potentials and not DNA transmitting radio waves. Anyway, I'll see what he's been up to.
I thought I should write a bit more about the way blood memories might be encoded, as well as the way in which their existence (and content!) can be tested for.
Basically, we know the brain works through associations. Neurons and their synapses are just an implementation of associations, where neurons stand in for terms, and synapses for connections between the terms. It's so super easy to see these terms can be on any level of abstraction, from "red blot in visual field at coordinates x,y" to "a mighty warrior wearing only panties and a helmet wielding a big sword". And we already know the human brain can chain associations to form sentences like "warrior stabs orc". Each term can be associated with many followon terms: "warrior stabs", "warrior cooks", "warrior soars". In the age of LLMs, it's no controversy at all to say all these associations can be encoded as weights, and obviously these weights can be stored in DNA, or *on* DNA. And at this point you probably know how the rest of this story is going to go. :) I'll just say that, insofar blood memories encode archetypal stories, they'll probably operate on a limited number of terms, for ease of encoding. We can also imagine this set of terms used for encoding blood memories is standardised (the same what the shape of the eye is standardised), but we can also imagine the world is split into provinces according to their standardization of terms. Lots of imagining going on here. So that if a particular blood memory is encoded in, say, Spain in 1400, it's decoding in, say Argentina in 1400 would potentially be completely different. Ah yes, silly me, I just invented an argument against race mixing. Good thing for me all people are the same race, and anyway any potential blood memory encoding provinces DON'T have to follow skin color provinces. ;)
Anyway, how would you read out the contents of blood memories? Assuming they even exist, you read it out the same way you read out the data from LLMs. You give the subject (or LLM) some initial prompt, the start of a story, and ask the subject to write the next sentence. IN THEORY, aggregating this response over a large number of people, over a large geographic area, over a large time period would blot out reason and leave us with the subconscious content. And then, to test if blood memories even exist, do the same experiment with people who stem from IVF nucleus transfer fertilization. IF blood memories exist, and if they're transmitted through DNA methylation, these people will have markedly different readouts from "normal" people with whom they ought to be sharing blood memories.
Oh, wait a minute! But what if the blood memories aren't transmitted through conception, but through pregnancy! After all, 9 months is an awful long time to spend buried inside an organism...
Plus, all that sperm that gushes out for a man and into a woman! How much information is present in there? Where does all that info go, oblivion? Or does a woman have a way of "interrogating" the sperm she got?
This brings to mind a poster presentation I saw 40 years ago at a physics conference where someone modeled the DNA double helix as a helical TWT (Traveling Wave Tube). He claimed that cells might be able to communicate with each other using these TWTs as emitters and receivers of photonic energy, though I can no longer remember what the specific wavelength range was. Therefore if sufficient planaria DNA remained in tact, it could cause a resonance that passed on the red light aversion to the DNA in the cells of living planaria. I would be interested in knowing if the wavelengths were coincidentally in the 5G range.
If you consider DNA as an antenna, it is specifically a fractal antenna, due to the extremely compact way it folds within the nucleus. Wavelength range roughly corresponds to the smallest structural level (say, maybe, individual nucleotides) to the full extent of the unwound molecule; due to the folding, it should be sensitive to everything in between.
True, but back when I saw this, fractal mathematics was new and the fractal antenna had not yet been described. The wavelength range and sensitivity would need to be recalculated. However the antenna is not the same as the radio wave emitted/receiver which requires electrical charge to move within or along the tubular structure.
If we strust the Smithsonian Magazine, this might be an interesting read, especially since it mentions and links to the criticisms against the original flatworm-experiements which gave rise to the idea that they retain memory in their cells:
If I recall correctly, in the original experiments in the 1950s, it later came to light that the worms had followed the trail made by the ones who first passed through the maze, but modern studies account for that and the worms do seem to have some way of retaining memory even if beheaded.
Seems to me the science is still out on this one, but it surely is an interesting topic. Now, imagine if manage to combine (possible) cellular or RNA-memory with the qualities of the Hydra jellyfish (which is "immortal" in such a way that it reverts to puberty instead of dying), and then add . . .
Rikard, thank you for finding this and sending me down this rabbit hole. I remembered another idea I've been kicking around my head for a while which is relevant for the topic of blood memories.
Multicellular organisms are best understood as distributed cybernetic systems - the same thing as server clusters, or connected data centeres. In a server cluster, as in a body, there are different units that need to communicate with one another to complete a task together. The issue is how is this communication accomplished, what is the mechanism? In multicellular organisms, it's been known for one or two centuries that they use small molecules to communicate. These molecules are called hormones. However: ask yourself, what is the bandwith of hormones? How many messages can hormones transmit, and at what rate? We can, in general, model each hormone as a communication channel and that transmits messages by changing the concentration of the hormone in the body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem But what is the total bandwith of all hormones in the body? Wikipedia lists 76 hormones in humans, and if we assume each one of them has... 256 reliably distinct concentration levels (let's guess, although it's probably less than that), than that gives us 608 bits to work with. Because it takes blood some 20 seconds at a minimum to circulate all throught the body, the signalling rate is quite limited, maybe 1 transition per minute. This means the total hormonal bandwith is about 10 bits per second. That's not a lot. Can you really run a human body on that? Well, you also have the nervous system, and it certainly does all kinds of crazy things (wounds that are not innervated heal much longer than wounds that are, inflamation that isn't innervated goes worse than the one which is), but the nervous system is centralized. Wouldn't it be logical if there were also a horizontal communication system, where liver and kindey could talk directly, without needing the brain to ferry information to and from?
Enter endoviruses. Now, the official, mainstream opinion on endoviruses is as follows: they are mutated nonfunctional remnants of old infections that can't be removed from the DNA because the human body is very imperfect and just can't do that. Endoviral activity, therefore, isn't of any interest to biomedicine because it's simply an aberation from the beautiful harmony of the simple and compact human body that we more or less understand completely. But I have some other ideas. :) You see, all cells in the body have marker proteins. These are proteins embedded in the cell membrane that uniquely identify the cell according to it's type and probably according to other criteria as well. Now, actual viruses often use these marker proteins to gain entry into the cell. But... what if, over billions of years of evolution, (multicellular) organisms developed a scheme where they use these proteins as an address? It would go like this: the liver cell has some things it needs to communicate to the kidney cell (I'm harping on liver and kidney because a failure of one of these two organs causes the failure of the other one, basically proving they're connected). It encodes this information into RNA, and encases this information into a virion (viral particle). It puts complementary marker proteins into the surface of this virion, the proteins it puts uniquely identifying the destination. It then releases the virion into the bloodstream. The virion tumbles around the body aimlessly, constantly bumping into cells and trying to mate with their marker proteins. Eventually, it bumps into a kidney cell and the virion's complementary marker proteins mate with the marker proteins of the kidney cell (the proteins they complement). The kidney cell then pulls in the virion, upacks it and acts according to the information contained within.
Now THIS scheme can have bandwiths in the kilobits per second, per channel, and you're not practically limited in the number of channels. There's only so many permutations of atoms that make up small molecules before the permutations start interfering with essential processes or start being too alike other permutations. Not to mention that, the more complex the simple molecule, the more complicated the enzyme PATHWAY (it's never just one enzyme) required to synthesize it. But marker proteins don't have those problems. They can have LOTS of variability, every permutation is distinct from another, and all permuations are created by the exact same enzyme pathway. If endoviruses are an essential communication mechanism of multicellular organisms, that mechanism can in agregate provide the body with several megabits per second to do it's internal communication. The best part actually is that the communication doesn't have to be limited to internal communication. If two organisms share their bodily fluids (kissing?), they can exchange information using their endoviruses. And it even gets better. There's nothing stopping one species from weaponizing it's endoviruses against another species. For all we know, all those viruses floating about today may just be runaway bioweapons first deployed in mid or late Archean by microbes combating each other. The first computer cracker may have been some anonymous amoeba 1.3 billion years ago. ;)
Fascinating concept. I've been convinced for a while that viruses in general are wildly misunderstood. The fact that huge portions of the genome have been identified as viral in origin indicates that they play an absolutely crucial role in evolution; it makes perfect sense that this would be true going all the way back to the Archean era. We know bacteria essentially talk to one another using plasmids. Viruses would then be a natural extension of this, enabling communication over much longer distances thanks to the protective protein shell. They would also provide an external storage for genetic information - the virome is the cloud to the cellular terminal.
That is a relevatory take on it, I'd say. I don't have the expertise in either field to judge the probability of it having any truth to it, sadly, but it is very intriguing an idea.
If we scale it up (because my brother is very much into neural nets, AI-learning and that stuff) to ants, we have the same conundrum: How does the anthill retain information?
The queen certainly hasn'r anything we'd call a brain, so where's the memory stored at? According to my brother, because neural nets and machine learning is sometimes modeled on anthills, all the ants are the neurons retaining the memories and functions, apart from what is hard-coded into them.
Surely this suggests that there is merit to your idea, given the similarities in principle, but how to start testing I haven't the first clue.
I do know from my own experience that anthills have memories. One ant (a scout) lays down a scent-trail and if it finds a food source it returns to the anthill so others can backtrack. Which is annoying when the trail leads to the pantry and some forgotten piece of fruit that's been misplaced behind something.
Solution is to scrub the entire pantry out using chlorine and/or white spirits (though not at the same time) to remove the scent-trail. Should fix things, right? Nope.
The ants will return for weeks after, looking for food. How, when the trail has been removed? I've actively tested this by removing the soil they walked on to the outer wall and replacing it, plus pouring ashes from the stove on top of the new soil.
But trail or no trail, for weeks they return. And they return after hibernating for six months during winter too - surely the pheromones in the trail have broken down by then and gone?
Only explanation I can see is that the ants multiple methods of communication acts as a motile brain.
Even weired are the types of fungi that can move about. They unerringly always find the optimal path through any obstacle. No sensory organs except touch that we can discern. No brain, no nervous system, no muscles, yet mobile and motile and able to navigate.
Remember John's recent article about orbital observatories mad up out of thousands and thousands of satellites combinging data input? Isn't it possible that what you describe as an idea works similar to that? Slow communication and very few bits per transmitting unit, but on the other hand a constant "flow" of such transmitters creating a normal distribution-based level of transmission, meaning the recipient system only has to react to the tails of the curve (though the "curve" would be a 3-D hump, rather, or even a sphere of overlapping fields - bit difficult for us to draw on a chalkboard; I always wanted actual hologram-tech when teaching).
What an idea to wake up to - I'm reading your thoughts and clacking this down before coffee even!
Intelligence is far more widely distributed within the biosphere than we usually assume. Fungi for example essentially act as a nervous system for a forest. Plants themselves are quite clearly communicating with one another, reacting to their environments, learning from their environments and from each other … it's been documented that trees perform much better when they can learn from their mothers, for example, which indicates that trees pass down cultural information as well as genetic information.
I suspect that the answer to “how do organisms communicate and preserve information” is generally “all of the above”, ie using every possible modality - chemical, structural, electromagnetic, genetic, sociocultural…
You could not have cast a more effective spell to re-enchant the world than this essay. I’m right there with you on all of this, the world is not the world we think we know, it is deeply mysterious and as we’ve stretched the limits of what we can know materially about the physical universe, we must either descend finally into nihilism, or consider our place in a divine story whose origins are shrouded in the mysts of the mind of god.
Excellent essay, it feels as if you two condensed things that everyone knew but couldn’t articulate properly and all the greatest writings are of this general nature.
You may already know this, but the English words "story" and "history" both come from Latin "historia". Almost all other European languages still use "historia" to mean both "story" (fiction) and "history" (fact). Modern German uses "Geschichte" to refer to both meanings.
What this implies is that there has traditionally been no hard distinction drawn between story and history. Julius Caesar was no longer a man but a god to the generations of Romans that followed him. Our modern historical consciousness which has divided "fact" (history) from "fiction" (story) is a very recent development.
Very interesting point. The Old English equivalents were ‘talu’ (tale) and ‘spel’ (spell), both of which seem much closer in sense to the Greek ‘mythos’ than to the Latin ‘(hi)storia’.
Yes. The underlying pattern seems to always be the same (the Hero's Journey), but the difference is who the hero is. A tale is about somebody who is alive. A myth is about a god. A legend is about a religious figure: prophet or saint etc.
Same in Swedish and the other Nordic languages: "historia" can mean history and story, though we also use saga, which lies smack inbetween both, since the Sagas are both stories and history.
You are indeed correct that there used to be no real distinction in conception between story/history, and history the subject is a quite recent invention to boot: 19th century in fact. Before that, due to people's ideas of history being so heavily influenced and dominated by the Judei-Christian myth about the age and origin of the world, writing history and telling stories came to the same thing, and were often intended (by the ruling castes) as a means to prove that their rule were just and ordained by higher power.
Many a "historian" of ages past in Europe spent lots of ink and vellum to "prove" that the royal house patronising him could draw a direct lineage to Noah, and that the realm itself was descended from Atlantis: Olof Rudbeck of Sweden wrote a treatise called the 'Atlantica' (1677) in which he claimed that Scandinavia was Atlantis, and that the land rising a little each year (something which is readily observable along the Swedish coast) proved this.
Needless to say, this was contested - hotly - by foreign contemporaries and lauded by many of the current ruling crop of heads.
I think every nation with a long lineage has such historians in their history, and the worth of it lies in that these men were actually very learned and well-read as well as well-travelled; their treatises are therefore a treasure-trove into how people thought just a few centuries ago, and how their [Normal] led them astray.
A lesson for us to consider: how is our [Normal] and our struggle over it leading us astray, according to people in the 2300s?
Yes, and the "higher power" changes over time. Thus, for the ancients, their culture heroes were usually said to be born of a god and a virgin (Jesus was not alone there). Meanwhile, medieval Europeans wanted to be linked back to the Greeks and Romans, thus you get stories like Brutus of Troy, a mythical British king who was supposed to be descended from Aeneas of Troy.
This division is not a clear-cut as it's made out to be. Much of "history" is a narrative guided by societal values. Case in point: Much of the country thinks Trump is George Washington and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. Another large group thinks he is Hitler/Satan. The group that thinks he's neither will probably have little influence on how he is depicted in the future.
Thank you, it's not often nowadays one is spoiled with such a well-thought out dissertation on where our ideas and conceptions may come from, or have derived from.
For more inspiration in this bottomless topic, perhaps looking into Nordic petroglyphs (called "hällristning" in Swedish, "häll" here meaning rock or cliff face, and "ristning" meaning carving/scratching). In Tanum alone, there are over 1 500 such carvings:
Close to Evagraven (a ravine where the snow doesn't melt in Summer) in Middle Sweden (Härjedalen) at a place called Ruänden, there are carvings dated to 2 000BC on a South-facing cliff-side.
Given that there's no kind of Rosetta-stone for these, they are very open to interpretation and historians/archeologists tend to opt for the most mundane ones (as a form of CYA sadly common in modern academia, as creativity and freedom of thought is nowadays punished rather than lauded).
As for the diagram for story-structure, I personally love and loathe such in equal degree: love since they simplify teaching and talking about it, loathe because 9 out of 10 assimilate the structure as a blueprint rather than simply shorthand for ease-of-communication.
It is the same sickness that cause people to lump gods together into categories and make statements such as "Coyote and Loki and Anansi are basically the same kind of god, the Trickster". Like Hel they are! Common theme does not mean they are the same. The Serpent in Judeo-Christian tradition vs Quetzalcoatl vs Jormungandr vs I-forget-what-the-Australians-called-their-feathered serpent vs . . . not the same. In some cases, not even close.
Anyway. Another thing that might interest you as a delver into Saga and Story, Myth and Legend, are the Ugarit fragments: the Tale of Aqhat, the Baal Cycle and the Legend of Keret. The main themes in all three are easily recognisable. (Odds are, you've read them but in case you haven't, do look them up.)
Again, thanks for such a well-written text. On a purely personal note, I consider pen&paper RPG to be the re-awakening of proper old-school storytelling as the teller of the tale would adapt the story and style to the audience, and often letting their outbursts and reactions become part of the telling.
One thing I would add to the archetype model, further to your thoughts, is that it is just a framework - on their own, they have no real personality or uniqueness. The Hero’s Journey, reduced to a schematic plot arc, is not a compelling tale. It's just a diagram.
Similarly, with ‘the trickster’. This is a type of God, to be sure, but the actual Gods are specific individuals, with names, histories, organic ties to the people and locales from which they come. They emerge from the archetypal forms, just as stories emerge from the Hero’s Journey, but it is precisely the unique details which flesh out their lives and personalities that make them real … just as the archetypal category Man is not really real, but the specific men that belong to that category are.
An author who I enjoy, who blends archetypal myth into si-fi and fiction is Vaughn Heppner, specifically in his Lost Civilization and Traveler series's. I call it the "reblending" of existing archetypal myth.
In 5000 years Zhukov, Montgomery, and Patton are different manifeastations of the same mythical hero, while Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt are manifestations of the same Great Leader archetype. Of course Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and Satan are all different manifestations of the same primordial evil. Interesting concept for a fiction novel we're the history of our modern age, after a great apocalypse, becomes the archetypal myth of some future civilization.
Thanks for your thoughts, yes it is the uniqueness of a manifestation of an archetype that gives it its meaning... this is why those that focus too narrowly on symbolism may become overly detached from reality and numb to current events
Carter from Barsoom, you are always right on the target. Saxon Cross, delighted to meet you. Now, regarding the "myth of (in?) the future": one of my favorite scifi books is Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End. The main protagonists there is Kerellen, from one of Clarke's 'guiding aliens'. His form looks like our myth of the Devil. At the end we are told by Kerellen why that image is so terrible for us. A lovely story utilizing Clarke's favorite trope very beautifully.
(And, Sir Barzoom, where do you get your illustrations from!?)
Well, I've subscribed to Saxon Cross, too, and saw that he has a pile of previous essays I'll certainly take a look at. And the Clarke was as much for you (doesn't surprise me that you know it already) as for other readers. Get the word out there.
Excellent essay. The expression of psychic distress "it's eating me alive" is all the more uncanny. People promoting "my truth" have a correct anxiety - what is true can only be consecrated or cannibalised, its cultural output promoting the same. To think that there would be literal consequences is beyond the pale for many.
if there is some sense in which our consciousnesses "create" reality, then it is harrowing to think of what realities are being created in a time like ours
Nov 13·edited Nov 13Liked by John Carter, The Saxon Cross
"Anyone who has been touched by the power of the Arthur myths never forgets the experience. It happened to me back in 1974, in Toronto, when I was an Assistant Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum. The Museum thought it would be a good idea if I gave a public lecture on the subject of ‘Arthur’s Britain’. On the day of the lecture I arrived, but the crowd around the main entrance was so big that I had to go down to the basement and enter through the goods entrance.
I clutched my slides in what was rapidly becoming a very sweaty palm. Upstairs, the main lecture theatre was already packed, and there was still half an hour to go. I later learned that additional loudspeakers were positioned outside the building—and remember, this was Canada in the winter.
I think the lecture was successful, but I was so dazed that I can’t in all honesty remember how it went.
Arthur had worked his magic, and had left me an older and a wiser young man. After that experience, I simply will not accept that the appeal of Arthur is just about British origin myths or the romance of chivalry. I do not believe that there is a rational explanation, but I am convinced that there is a power to these stories that cannot be explained away."
Francis Pryor | English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in Britain.
The round table as a manifestation of the age of chivalry is nice, but frankly, probably the least interesting thing about Arthurian legend. Strip the French additions away, and you can see how deep and mysterious this tradition really is. Something is special about this tale
I’ve had a theory for a while now that Ragnarok has already happened. I think that Jormungandr might have been the comet that struck during the younger dryas, with the massive storms that followed being Thor battling the World Serpent
I would however caution that there's a danger in attempting to reduce a myth to any one historical incident or even metaphorical interpretation. A myth is usually multiple things at once.
What an amazing tale. Tolkien and Lewis, among others, have a mysterious resonance that you out meaning to; that makes sense. It seems natural to understand what we don't know in light of what we do know. It seems there is one great story, the story of Redemption; the real Hero's journey. And that story encompasses every other event from Creation to the present. Why wouldn't our stories reflect that? Each telling or illuminating a small part of the whole.
There be monsters, but these stories teach us that monsters may be slain.
Since I have been swept back into Catholicism, I often think about an idea that sounds like a paradox to the modern ear: that mystery and truth not only coexist in the world, but also deepen one another. God creates each thing in the world with a particular nature. This nature is what it is (“I am who am”, or, alternately, “objectivity”). He gives humans our sensory powers (the 5 physical ones, plus the visionary-perceptive powers you mention with regard to artists and prophets, like sight itself present to different degrees in different individuals) in order for us to perceive the true nature of things, his various creations. As you point out, people have positive responses to certain archetypes and stories and negative responses to others; we are able to ascertain when a story is truthful. I enjoyed reading your hypothesis as to why this is the case. It is from the recognition of a truth, the knowable, that we can experience joy in the contemplation of mystery, the unknowable. Thanks for writing!
We all have our unique ways of perceiving the divine- who knows how many countless other ways there are to try and describe what the cosmos is beyond what I have said here
Thank you for helping me put this together John! I think your audience will really enjoy it
It was an absolute pleasure working with you on this! I’m sure they will.
The last picture, and related paragraph, had some powerful onion for me.
They were the first thing I saw, and I liked your post before reading the rest.
Decades ago, I read about a scientific study. I've been trying to find out more about it, but to no avail. Here's how the study went: the scientists experimented with planaria, the flatworms. It's important to remember here that planaria are able to regenerate themselves completely, including their brains. If you cut a planaria in half, both halves will regrow and you'll end up with two planarias. Well, the scientists trained one group of planaria to associate red light with pain. They would flash the red light and zap the planaria with electricity. The planaria eventually learned to curl up into a ball when they just saw the red light. The scientists then ground the planaria to a pulp and fed this pulp to another group of planaria that were not exposed to either the red light or the zapping. When the scientists then exposed this group to red light, they too would curl up into a ball. They gained the knowledge of the planaria they ate. As I said, I've been trying to find this study, but I wasn't able to. Perhaps somebody would like to replicate it?
In other news, I'm convinved all that "junk DNA" is not junk but is probably storage for epigenetics. After all, in electronic circuits you could say memory circuits are "junk circuits", compared to circuits that actually do something. So many problems in biomedicine's understanding of genes stem from the fact the science is buit from experiments on procariotes, and extrapolating those things to multicellular eucariotes. As a general rule, procariotes don't have junk DNA. But then again, as a general rule, procariotes live by reproducing. Many of them don't even have the ability to *move*, meaning they are nothing more than self-copying machines thrown about. It's a fundamentally different mode of existance compared to multicellular eucariotes.
One other thing when talking about epigenetics. In human conception, the DNA of the sperm gets demethylated, but not the DNA from the ovum. However, when the ovum is artificially fertilized (by inserting the sperm DNA IIRC), both DNAs get demethylated. So, if blood memories are real, people who stem from in-vitro fertilization, the ones who don't stem from sperm and ova mating, are probably going to have all sorts of disordered blood memories, or none at all. If you wanted to test this hypothesis, they would be a good starting point. ;)
I think I might have heard of the flatworm study. Rings a bell.
Fascinating speculation about IVF.
But, I suspect we look too much at DNA. Michael Levin’s work on bioelectric fields indicate that a lot of the large scale morphological patterns are actually carried at that level. So genetic data might not be exclusively, or even primarily, chemical in nature.
Not familiar about Levin's work, I'll look it up. Found some article in Cell (Bioelectric signaling: Reprogrammable circuits
underlying embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer). Seems legit but in this article he's talking about multicell-level coordination, steming from membrane potentials and not DNA transmitting radio waves. Anyway, I'll see what he's been up to.
I thought I should write a bit more about the way blood memories might be encoded, as well as the way in which their existence (and content!) can be tested for.
Basically, we know the brain works through associations. Neurons and their synapses are just an implementation of associations, where neurons stand in for terms, and synapses for connections between the terms. It's so super easy to see these terms can be on any level of abstraction, from "red blot in visual field at coordinates x,y" to "a mighty warrior wearing only panties and a helmet wielding a big sword". And we already know the human brain can chain associations to form sentences like "warrior stabs orc". Each term can be associated with many followon terms: "warrior stabs", "warrior cooks", "warrior soars". In the age of LLMs, it's no controversy at all to say all these associations can be encoded as weights, and obviously these weights can be stored in DNA, or *on* DNA. And at this point you probably know how the rest of this story is going to go. :) I'll just say that, insofar blood memories encode archetypal stories, they'll probably operate on a limited number of terms, for ease of encoding. We can also imagine this set of terms used for encoding blood memories is standardised (the same what the shape of the eye is standardised), but we can also imagine the world is split into provinces according to their standardization of terms. Lots of imagining going on here. So that if a particular blood memory is encoded in, say, Spain in 1400, it's decoding in, say Argentina in 1400 would potentially be completely different. Ah yes, silly me, I just invented an argument against race mixing. Good thing for me all people are the same race, and anyway any potential blood memory encoding provinces DON'T have to follow skin color provinces. ;)
Anyway, how would you read out the contents of blood memories? Assuming they even exist, you read it out the same way you read out the data from LLMs. You give the subject (or LLM) some initial prompt, the start of a story, and ask the subject to write the next sentence. IN THEORY, aggregating this response over a large number of people, over a large geographic area, over a large time period would blot out reason and leave us with the subconscious content. And then, to test if blood memories even exist, do the same experiment with people who stem from IVF nucleus transfer fertilization. IF blood memories exist, and if they're transmitted through DNA methylation, these people will have markedly different readouts from "normal" people with whom they ought to be sharing blood memories.
Oh, wait a minute! But what if the blood memories aren't transmitted through conception, but through pregnancy! After all, 9 months is an awful long time to spend buried inside an organism...
Plus, all that sperm that gushes out for a man and into a woman! How much information is present in there? Where does all that info go, oblivion? Or does a woman have a way of "interrogating" the sperm she got?
This brings to mind a poster presentation I saw 40 years ago at a physics conference where someone modeled the DNA double helix as a helical TWT (Traveling Wave Tube). He claimed that cells might be able to communicate with each other using these TWTs as emitters and receivers of photonic energy, though I can no longer remember what the specific wavelength range was. Therefore if sufficient planaria DNA remained in tact, it could cause a resonance that passed on the red light aversion to the DNA in the cells of living planaria. I would be interested in knowing if the wavelengths were coincidentally in the 5G range.
If you consider DNA as an antenna, it is specifically a fractal antenna, due to the extremely compact way it folds within the nucleus. Wavelength range roughly corresponds to the smallest structural level (say, maybe, individual nucleotides) to the full extent of the unwound molecule; due to the folding, it should be sensitive to everything in between.
True, but back when I saw this, fractal mathematics was new and the fractal antenna had not yet been described. The wavelength range and sensitivity would need to be recalculated. However the antenna is not the same as the radio wave emitted/receiver which requires electrical charge to move within or along the tubular structure.
Damn. That was a long time ago, then.
If we strust the Smithsonian Magazine, this might be an interesting read, especially since it mentions and links to the criticisms against the original flatworm-experiements which gave rise to the idea that they retain memory in their cells:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-decapitated-worms-regrow-old-memories-along-with-new-heads-9497048/
If I recall correctly, in the original experiments in the 1950s, it later came to light that the worms had followed the trail made by the ones who first passed through the maze, but modern studies account for that and the worms do seem to have some way of retaining memory even if beheaded.
Seems to me the science is still out on this one, but it surely is an interesting topic. Now, imagine if manage to combine (possible) cellular or RNA-memory with the qualities of the Hydra jellyfish (which is "immortal" in such a way that it reverts to puberty instead of dying), and then add . . .
Rikard, thank you for finding this and sending me down this rabbit hole. I remembered another idea I've been kicking around my head for a while which is relevant for the topic of blood memories.
Multicellular organisms are best understood as distributed cybernetic systems - the same thing as server clusters, or connected data centeres. In a server cluster, as in a body, there are different units that need to communicate with one another to complete a task together. The issue is how is this communication accomplished, what is the mechanism? In multicellular organisms, it's been known for one or two centuries that they use small molecules to communicate. These molecules are called hormones. However: ask yourself, what is the bandwith of hormones? How many messages can hormones transmit, and at what rate? We can, in general, model each hormone as a communication channel and that transmits messages by changing the concentration of the hormone in the body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem But what is the total bandwith of all hormones in the body? Wikipedia lists 76 hormones in humans, and if we assume each one of them has... 256 reliably distinct concentration levels (let's guess, although it's probably less than that), than that gives us 608 bits to work with. Because it takes blood some 20 seconds at a minimum to circulate all throught the body, the signalling rate is quite limited, maybe 1 transition per minute. This means the total hormonal bandwith is about 10 bits per second. That's not a lot. Can you really run a human body on that? Well, you also have the nervous system, and it certainly does all kinds of crazy things (wounds that are not innervated heal much longer than wounds that are, inflamation that isn't innervated goes worse than the one which is), but the nervous system is centralized. Wouldn't it be logical if there were also a horizontal communication system, where liver and kindey could talk directly, without needing the brain to ferry information to and from?
Enter endoviruses. Now, the official, mainstream opinion on endoviruses is as follows: they are mutated nonfunctional remnants of old infections that can't be removed from the DNA because the human body is very imperfect and just can't do that. Endoviral activity, therefore, isn't of any interest to biomedicine because it's simply an aberation from the beautiful harmony of the simple and compact human body that we more or less understand completely. But I have some other ideas. :) You see, all cells in the body have marker proteins. These are proteins embedded in the cell membrane that uniquely identify the cell according to it's type and probably according to other criteria as well. Now, actual viruses often use these marker proteins to gain entry into the cell. But... what if, over billions of years of evolution, (multicellular) organisms developed a scheme where they use these proteins as an address? It would go like this: the liver cell has some things it needs to communicate to the kidney cell (I'm harping on liver and kidney because a failure of one of these two organs causes the failure of the other one, basically proving they're connected). It encodes this information into RNA, and encases this information into a virion (viral particle). It puts complementary marker proteins into the surface of this virion, the proteins it puts uniquely identifying the destination. It then releases the virion into the bloodstream. The virion tumbles around the body aimlessly, constantly bumping into cells and trying to mate with their marker proteins. Eventually, it bumps into a kidney cell and the virion's complementary marker proteins mate with the marker proteins of the kidney cell (the proteins they complement). The kidney cell then pulls in the virion, upacks it and acts according to the information contained within.
Now THIS scheme can have bandwiths in the kilobits per second, per channel, and you're not practically limited in the number of channels. There's only so many permutations of atoms that make up small molecules before the permutations start interfering with essential processes or start being too alike other permutations. Not to mention that, the more complex the simple molecule, the more complicated the enzyme PATHWAY (it's never just one enzyme) required to synthesize it. But marker proteins don't have those problems. They can have LOTS of variability, every permutation is distinct from another, and all permuations are created by the exact same enzyme pathway. If endoviruses are an essential communication mechanism of multicellular organisms, that mechanism can in agregate provide the body with several megabits per second to do it's internal communication. The best part actually is that the communication doesn't have to be limited to internal communication. If two organisms share their bodily fluids (kissing?), they can exchange information using their endoviruses. And it even gets better. There's nothing stopping one species from weaponizing it's endoviruses against another species. For all we know, all those viruses floating about today may just be runaway bioweapons first deployed in mid or late Archean by microbes combating each other. The first computer cracker may have been some anonymous amoeba 1.3 billion years ago. ;)
Fascinating concept. I've been convinced for a while that viruses in general are wildly misunderstood. The fact that huge portions of the genome have been identified as viral in origin indicates that they play an absolutely crucial role in evolution; it makes perfect sense that this would be true going all the way back to the Archean era. We know bacteria essentially talk to one another using plasmids. Viruses would then be a natural extension of this, enabling communication over much longer distances thanks to the protective protein shell. They would also provide an external storage for genetic information - the virome is the cloud to the cellular terminal.
That is a relevatory take on it, I'd say. I don't have the expertise in either field to judge the probability of it having any truth to it, sadly, but it is very intriguing an idea.
If we scale it up (because my brother is very much into neural nets, AI-learning and that stuff) to ants, we have the same conundrum: How does the anthill retain information?
The queen certainly hasn'r anything we'd call a brain, so where's the memory stored at? According to my brother, because neural nets and machine learning is sometimes modeled on anthills, all the ants are the neurons retaining the memories and functions, apart from what is hard-coded into them.
Surely this suggests that there is merit to your idea, given the similarities in principle, but how to start testing I haven't the first clue.
I do know from my own experience that anthills have memories. One ant (a scout) lays down a scent-trail and if it finds a food source it returns to the anthill so others can backtrack. Which is annoying when the trail leads to the pantry and some forgotten piece of fruit that's been misplaced behind something.
Solution is to scrub the entire pantry out using chlorine and/or white spirits (though not at the same time) to remove the scent-trail. Should fix things, right? Nope.
The ants will return for weeks after, looking for food. How, when the trail has been removed? I've actively tested this by removing the soil they walked on to the outer wall and replacing it, plus pouring ashes from the stove on top of the new soil.
But trail or no trail, for weeks they return. And they return after hibernating for six months during winter too - surely the pheromones in the trail have broken down by then and gone?
Only explanation I can see is that the ants multiple methods of communication acts as a motile brain.
Even weired are the types of fungi that can move about. They unerringly always find the optimal path through any obstacle. No sensory organs except touch that we can discern. No brain, no nervous system, no muscles, yet mobile and motile and able to navigate.
Remember John's recent article about orbital observatories mad up out of thousands and thousands of satellites combinging data input? Isn't it possible that what you describe as an idea works similar to that? Slow communication and very few bits per transmitting unit, but on the other hand a constant "flow" of such transmitters creating a normal distribution-based level of transmission, meaning the recipient system only has to react to the tails of the curve (though the "curve" would be a 3-D hump, rather, or even a sphere of overlapping fields - bit difficult for us to draw on a chalkboard; I always wanted actual hologram-tech when teaching).
What an idea to wake up to - I'm reading your thoughts and clacking this down before coffee even!
Intelligence is far more widely distributed within the biosphere than we usually assume. Fungi for example essentially act as a nervous system for a forest. Plants themselves are quite clearly communicating with one another, reacting to their environments, learning from their environments and from each other … it's been documented that trees perform much better when they can learn from their mothers, for example, which indicates that trees pass down cultural information as well as genetic information.
I suspect that the answer to “how do organisms communicate and preserve information” is generally “all of the above”, ie using every possible modality - chemical, structural, electromagnetic, genetic, sociocultural…
Oh right! Thanks for finding that! Now I have a lead! :)
I remember the flatworms, i think Japan also did one with fungus as well.
Another banger from the Saxon Cross
Thank you Bilbo
He does write those.
You could not have cast a more effective spell to re-enchant the world than this essay. I’m right there with you on all of this, the world is not the world we think we know, it is deeply mysterious and as we’ve stretched the limits of what we can know materially about the physical universe, we must either descend finally into nihilism, or consider our place in a divine story whose origins are shrouded in the mysts of the mind of god.
Rationalism has played its course. What's coming will be a return to mysticism and "belief", for both good and ill most likely
Excellent essay, it feels as if you two condensed things that everyone knew but couldn’t articulate properly and all the greatest writings are of this general nature.
a high complement, thank you
You may already know this, but the English words "story" and "history" both come from Latin "historia". Almost all other European languages still use "historia" to mean both "story" (fiction) and "history" (fact). Modern German uses "Geschichte" to refer to both meanings.
What this implies is that there has traditionally been no hard distinction drawn between story and history. Julius Caesar was no longer a man but a god to the generations of Romans that followed him. Our modern historical consciousness which has divided "fact" (history) from "fiction" (story) is a very recent development.
Very interesting point. The Old English equivalents were ‘talu’ (tale) and ‘spel’ (spell), both of which seem much closer in sense to the Greek ‘mythos’ than to the Latin ‘(hi)storia’.
Yes. The underlying pattern seems to always be the same (the Hero's Journey), but the difference is who the hero is. A tale is about somebody who is alive. A myth is about a god. A legend is about a religious figure: prophet or saint etc.
Same in Swedish and the other Nordic languages: "historia" can mean history and story, though we also use saga, which lies smack inbetween both, since the Sagas are both stories and history.
You are indeed correct that there used to be no real distinction in conception between story/history, and history the subject is a quite recent invention to boot: 19th century in fact. Before that, due to people's ideas of history being so heavily influenced and dominated by the Judei-Christian myth about the age and origin of the world, writing history and telling stories came to the same thing, and were often intended (by the ruling castes) as a means to prove that their rule were just and ordained by higher power.
Many a "historian" of ages past in Europe spent lots of ink and vellum to "prove" that the royal house patronising him could draw a direct lineage to Noah, and that the realm itself was descended from Atlantis: Olof Rudbeck of Sweden wrote a treatise called the 'Atlantica' (1677) in which he claimed that Scandinavia was Atlantis, and that the land rising a little each year (something which is readily observable along the Swedish coast) proved this.
Needless to say, this was contested - hotly - by foreign contemporaries and lauded by many of the current ruling crop of heads.
I think every nation with a long lineage has such historians in their history, and the worth of it lies in that these men were actually very learned and well-read as well as well-travelled; their treatises are therefore a treasure-trove into how people thought just a few centuries ago, and how their [Normal] led them astray.
A lesson for us to consider: how is our [Normal] and our struggle over it leading us astray, according to people in the 2300s?
one then has to wonder- how many of those tales of lines of Noah and Atlantis are in fact true?
Yes, and the "higher power" changes over time. Thus, for the ancients, their culture heroes were usually said to be born of a god and a virgin (Jesus was not alone there). Meanwhile, medieval Europeans wanted to be linked back to the Greeks and Romans, thus you get stories like Brutus of Troy, a mythical British king who was supposed to be descended from Aeneas of Troy.
This division is not a clear-cut as it's made out to be. Much of "history" is a narrative guided by societal values. Case in point: Much of the country thinks Trump is George Washington and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. Another large group thinks he is Hitler/Satan. The group that thinks he's neither will probably have little influence on how he is depicted in the future.
Yes. And that dichotomy itself is mythical. It's the distinction between Tyrant and Sun King, at least as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Thank you, it's not often nowadays one is spoiled with such a well-thought out dissertation on where our ideas and conceptions may come from, or have derived from.
For more inspiration in this bottomless topic, perhaps looking into Nordic petroglyphs (called "hällristning" in Swedish, "häll" here meaning rock or cliff face, and "ristning" meaning carving/scratching). In Tanum alone, there are over 1 500 such carvings:
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/557
Close to Evagraven (a ravine where the snow doesn't melt in Summer) in Middle Sweden (Härjedalen) at a place called Ruänden, there are carvings dated to 2 000BC on a South-facing cliff-side.
Given that there's no kind of Rosetta-stone for these, they are very open to interpretation and historians/archeologists tend to opt for the most mundane ones (as a form of CYA sadly common in modern academia, as creativity and freedom of thought is nowadays punished rather than lauded).
As for the diagram for story-structure, I personally love and loathe such in equal degree: love since they simplify teaching and talking about it, loathe because 9 out of 10 assimilate the structure as a blueprint rather than simply shorthand for ease-of-communication.
It is the same sickness that cause people to lump gods together into categories and make statements such as "Coyote and Loki and Anansi are basically the same kind of god, the Trickster". Like Hel they are! Common theme does not mean they are the same. The Serpent in Judeo-Christian tradition vs Quetzalcoatl vs Jormungandr vs I-forget-what-the-Australians-called-their-feathered serpent vs . . . not the same. In some cases, not even close.
Anyway. Another thing that might interest you as a delver into Saga and Story, Myth and Legend, are the Ugarit fragments: the Tale of Aqhat, the Baal Cycle and the Legend of Keret. The main themes in all three are easily recognisable. (Odds are, you've read them but in case you haven't, do look them up.)
Again, thanks for such a well-written text. On a purely personal note, I consider pen&paper RPG to be the re-awakening of proper old-school storytelling as the teller of the tale would adapt the story and style to the audience, and often letting their outbursts and reactions become part of the telling.
One thing I would add to the archetype model, further to your thoughts, is that it is just a framework - on their own, they have no real personality or uniqueness. The Hero’s Journey, reduced to a schematic plot arc, is not a compelling tale. It's just a diagram.
Similarly, with ‘the trickster’. This is a type of God, to be sure, but the actual Gods are specific individuals, with names, histories, organic ties to the people and locales from which they come. They emerge from the archetypal forms, just as stories emerge from the Hero’s Journey, but it is precisely the unique details which flesh out their lives and personalities that make them real … just as the archetypal category Man is not really real, but the specific men that belong to that category are.
An author who I enjoy, who blends archetypal myth into si-fi and fiction is Vaughn Heppner, specifically in his Lost Civilization and Traveler series's. I call it the "reblending" of existing archetypal myth.
In 5000 years Zhukov, Montgomery, and Patton are different manifeastations of the same mythical hero, while Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt are manifestations of the same Great Leader archetype. Of course Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and Satan are all different manifestations of the same primordial evil. Interesting concept for a fiction novel we're the history of our modern age, after a great apocalypse, becomes the archetypal myth of some future civilization.
Thanks for your thoughts, yes it is the uniqueness of a manifestation of an archetype that gives it its meaning... this is why those that focus too narrowly on symbolism may become overly detached from reality and numb to current events
Carter from Barsoom, you are always right on the target. Saxon Cross, delighted to meet you. Now, regarding the "myth of (in?) the future": one of my favorite scifi books is Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End. The main protagonists there is Kerellen, from one of Clarke's 'guiding aliens'. His form looks like our myth of the Devil. At the end we are told by Kerellen why that image is so terrible for us. A lovely story utilizing Clarke's favorite trope very beautifully.
(And, Sir Barzoom, where do you get your illustrations from!?)
I am not familiar with these stories, will have to check them out
Childhood’s End is a classic for good reason.
I get the illustrations from all over, but actually, in this case, Saxon Cross found most of them.
Well, I've subscribed to Saxon Cross, too, and saw that he has a pile of previous essays I'll certainly take a look at. And the Clarke was as much for you (doesn't surprise me that you know it already) as for other readers. Get the word out there.
Excellent essay. The expression of psychic distress "it's eating me alive" is all the more uncanny. People promoting "my truth" have a correct anxiety - what is true can only be consecrated or cannibalised, its cultural output promoting the same. To think that there would be literal consequences is beyond the pale for many.
if there is some sense in which our consciousnesses "create" reality, then it is harrowing to think of what realities are being created in a time like ours
Lends credence to the idea that we either bring Heaven down or Hell up. Raising Hell is easy when it's always on Heaven's tab.
"Anyone who has been touched by the power of the Arthur myths never forgets the experience. It happened to me back in 1974, in Toronto, when I was an Assistant Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum. The Museum thought it would be a good idea if I gave a public lecture on the subject of ‘Arthur’s Britain’. On the day of the lecture I arrived, but the crowd around the main entrance was so big that I had to go down to the basement and enter through the goods entrance.
I clutched my slides in what was rapidly becoming a very sweaty palm. Upstairs, the main lecture theatre was already packed, and there was still half an hour to go. I later learned that additional loudspeakers were positioned outside the building—and remember, this was Canada in the winter.
I think the lecture was successful, but I was so dazed that I can’t in all honesty remember how it went.
Arthur had worked his magic, and had left me an older and a wiser young man. After that experience, I simply will not accept that the appeal of Arthur is just about British origin myths or the romance of chivalry. I do not believe that there is a rational explanation, but I am convinced that there is a power to these stories that cannot be explained away."
Francis Pryor | English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in Britain.
The round table as a manifestation of the age of chivalry is nice, but frankly, probably the least interesting thing about Arthurian legend. Strip the French additions away, and you can see how deep and mysterious this tradition really is. Something is special about this tale
Powerful.
In the beginning was the word.
You could just sit and think about that one verse for an age
Brilliant piece Saxon!
I’ve had a theory for a while now that Ragnarok has already happened. I think that Jormungandr might have been the comet that struck during the younger dryas, with the massive storms that followed being Thor battling the World Serpent
Has happened and will happen again, perhaps. Who knows how many times to cycle of ages has turned
Entirely plausible.
I would however caution that there's a danger in attempting to reduce a myth to any one historical incident or even metaphorical interpretation. A myth is usually multiple things at once.
Absolutely. It would almost have to be, given how much history is being condensed into a verbal tale.
What an amazing tale. Tolkien and Lewis, among others, have a mysterious resonance that you out meaning to; that makes sense. It seems natural to understand what we don't know in light of what we do know. It seems there is one great story, the story of Redemption; the real Hero's journey. And that story encompasses every other event from Creation to the present. Why wouldn't our stories reflect that? Each telling or illuminating a small part of the whole.
There be monsters, but these stories teach us that monsters may be slain.
That great story could be called the "Word" of God- in Christ's human life is somehow contained all of creation
Since I have been swept back into Catholicism, I often think about an idea that sounds like a paradox to the modern ear: that mystery and truth not only coexist in the world, but also deepen one another. God creates each thing in the world with a particular nature. This nature is what it is (“I am who am”, or, alternately, “objectivity”). He gives humans our sensory powers (the 5 physical ones, plus the visionary-perceptive powers you mention with regard to artists and prophets, like sight itself present to different degrees in different individuals) in order for us to perceive the true nature of things, his various creations. As you point out, people have positive responses to certain archetypes and stories and negative responses to others; we are able to ascertain when a story is truthful. I enjoyed reading your hypothesis as to why this is the case. It is from the recognition of a truth, the knowable, that we can experience joy in the contemplation of mystery, the unknowable. Thanks for writing!
We all have our unique ways of perceiving the divine- who knows how many countless other ways there are to try and describe what the cosmos is beyond what I have said here
Thoroughly enjoyed this installment and I subscribed to Saxon Cross. The breakdown of the maps is fascinating! Thank you both for making my evening!
Thanks for reading!
The Saxon Cross never misses!
Thanks for always reading Josiah!