By David Robb ——Bio and Archives--October 28, 2024
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For many years, a viral infection has been spreading across the world. This virus often takes years before serious symptoms show up, but once it has taken hold, it is almost incurable. Like so many other diseases, it propagates most often in high population areas, such as cities. People in more rural areas are less likely to be infected, since infection seems to require close and frequent contact with other infected individuals.
The symptoms are subtle as the disease is primarily one of the mind. The faculties of logic and reason are affected adversely, causing the victim to be slowly divorced from accurate assessment of reality. In particular, the victim comes to believe that their thoughts and words create a form of reality; that by sufficient agreement among their fellow sufferers, they can shape the world into whatever form they wish.
Since most of these sufferers live in environments that are highly artificial and the product of human effort, this provides confirmation of a sort for their delusional and magical thinking. In cities, almost everything around is a result of human imagination and artifice. Even such plants as may be found are constrained to human defined planters in specified locations. Weather is one of the few things to intrude on that artificiality, and even that is often limited in its effects.
Indeed, the victim often suffers from the delusion that their modes of thought reflect a superior awareness. Affected individuals believe they have an intuitive sense of Truth so that anything they believe is true and correct. Furthermore, they also believe that while reality is personal and unique to each individual, agreement between individuals can define a shared reality. The idea that there is an objective reality........