Egregores, Geists, and Mindwar

Psychospiritual warfare is unavoidable. We will do well to learn its dynamics.

The concept of an egregore originates from occult traditions. The term is derived from the Greek word egrégoroi, which means “watchers.” But it’s also used to describe a collective thoughtform that gets summoned when enough people concentrate on the same idea pattern.

The resulting collective consciousness resembles a psychic entity, that is, a creature with a life of its own. Egregores influence—and are influenced by—the thoughts of those participating in their creation. If we were to relate the concept of an egregore to message manipulation en masse, perhaps we can see the latter in a different light.

In its various forms, media can be seen as a means of directing collective attention. For example, a sensational story, a broad campaign, or a mind virus can focus public attention and emotional energy on a specific concept or cause. These coalesce and strengthen a resultant set of thought patterns, and people start to think, speak, and act in malevolent synchrony. An egregore is born. When enough people hold such patterns in place of truth or good, they become dangerous.

The resulting mass belief has a kind of agency. In a manner of speaking, it lives.

If there are entities that supervene on the beliefs and actions of people guided by malevolent memeplexes, then there ought to be entities that supervene on the beliefs and actions of people guided by truth, beauty, and goodness. One might even be tempted to play on the Greek prefix eu-, meaning good, and coin the term eugregore. Better to call them Geists following Hegel.

Geists

Geists are thus quasi-entities that people can summon en masse by adopting a synchronized thoughtform, which tends to work toward the defense, health, well-being, and fulfillment of any given person and therefore of society. So, for example, if enough people react, say, to an egregore that is evil or wields untruth, it might take on the character of two titans battling it out for supremacy over the minds of the many.

Why is it useful to adopt a mythopoetic understanding of group behaviors, even if these only capture what we have referred to as mythic truths?

First, when we can better perceive the apparent agency of a mass movement by attributing to it the qualities of sentience, we can understand it at different levels of description. Metaphor has its limitations, of course, but it can also confer advantage in efforts to, say, confront evil or be inspired by a force of benevolence.

Further, if one can better ascribe evil to a supervenient entity, it can help her to restrain her temptation to attribute evil to the individuals that compose the substrate. Instead of thinking, 'These people are evil and they must be vanquished,' we can think, 'A destructive mass belief creates this entity, and it must be vanquished.'

Mindwar is awful, but kinetic war is hell. In most cases, we want to kill the egregore, not those who conjured it. Such is not a call for pacifism in the face of an existential threat. It is rather a call for circumspection about any rush to kinetic war if there is time to prevail in mindwar.

Analytic Relativism

Now, one man’s egregore is another’s geist. Of course, the reverse is also true. This is no argument for ethical relativism; it is an observation of human reality. Almost no one thinks she is evil. Even fewer believe they are wicked if those around them confirm or reinforce their priors in mass mimesis. Trapped as humans are in this state of affairs, we must build our particular order with a view to expanding an Empire of the Mind. And we must erect Geists as colossi and sentinels to protect and project that empire.

When it comes to inevitable mindwar, it behooves us not just to strike at the entity, but also to strike at the root. Remember the Law of Flow.

For a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve with freedom such that it provides easier and greater access to what flows.
—Adrian Bejan

Freedom in this context can be ideological or political, but it should be read as functional. Thus, when we imagine a supervenient entity (an egregore) arising from a cluster of minds unified in their beliefs, we must observe the tendency for these beliefs to be transmitted over time, as at t1, t2, t3, and so on. The thoughtform grows by calving, which in this context is to colonize minds.

Through the replication of mind viruses and behavioral mimesis, we can observe the exponential spread of a destructive thoughtform through a population like the vascular patterns of river basins or the expansion of a bacterial colony, where each tN represents an exponential leap. The Law of Flow means that river basins and bacterial colonies are “alive.”

Fighting Egregores, Disrupting Flows

Therefore, in mindwar, we must learn how to arrest the growth of an egregore. There are, of course, a few basic ways to do so:

• Starve the egregore of its primary flow resource—attention and belief—by promoting apathy, distraction, or alternative narratives that divert the mental energy of potential hosts.

  • The problem with this approach is that it can be short-term and can leave a residual egregore that can return with greater strength.

• Disrupt the vascular patterns of transmission, such as social networks, media channels, or cultural institutions, through targeted interventions such as deplatforming, suppression, or censorship to impede replication and propagation.

  • The problem with this approach is that shared transmission channels leave us vulnerable to our Geists being weakened or killed in the same manner.

• Directly constrict the functional freedom of the system at its root, such as by challenging and refactoring core beliefs or axioms that unify the cluster of minds, thereby causing internal dissonance and preventing persistent flow over time.

  • The problem with this approach is that it is both costly and challenging.

• Introduce competitive flow systems, akin to introducing a rival bacterial strain or redirecting a river's tributaries, by fostering healthier Geists or ideologies that outcompete the destructive ones for mindshare and evolutionary freedom.

  • The problem with this approach is that it is costly and difficult, as well, but in combination with the other costly and challenging approach above, these represent the best hope of vanquishing an egrigore.

Mindwar is neither cheap nor easy, and it is exceptionally costly and difficult when we consider the war-of-attrition nature of the combat between Geists and egregores.

Paradoxically, we can *fight* memeplexes of violence and domination with memeplexes of freedom and peace. But in mindwar, we still fight. Thus, unilateral disarmament is not an option. In mindwar, putting down one’s pen-sword is an invitation to a would-be occupying force to have its way with you here in the world of blood and cages. In such a sorry instance, your former Empire of the Mind will have let barbarians in the gates. And they will almost certainly raze your civilization to erect one of their own—one that is decidedly less peaceful, prosperous, equal, and free.'

This post was originally published at the Grey Robes.