American scientists have discovered a virus that attacks human DNA and may make people less intelligent, impairs brain activity and affects learning and memory, according to a report in Newsweek.

The virus known as ATCV-1 was discovered in throat swabs taken from healthy volunteers.

They virus normally infects green algae in lakes and rivers. (There goes drinking my green smoothie and super greens then! ;)

Researchers have no idea how it ended up affecting so many (43.5%) healthy volunteers.

However before you ask that frustrating friend or colleague if they have been to a lake or river lately (cmon on, sometimes you’ve wondered about ‘em), take a breath and remember - we humans are affected, in much larger numbers, by a more aggressive dumbing down virus.

I call it brain dumbness.

And we’ve all got it from time to time in different ways.

Think about this: According to Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman and former CEO of Google, every TWO days humans create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation up until 2003. Much of that is user generated content (Get me my cat!)…

Regardless the rate of information growth is incredible.

Good old Buckminsiter Fuller was one of the first to highlight the tsunami of information change heading our way.

In his 1982 book Critical Path he wrote about the “Knowledge Doubling Curve” revealing that human knowledge doubled every century up to around 1900. But by the end of World War II, that doubling had reduced to every 25 years!

This was before the invention of pcs, the web, before cell phones and instant messages, Facebook, 24x7 and YouTube.

Now human knowledge is doubling every 1 to 2 years, so we’re told.

Ray Kurzweil, futurist, author of the ‘Singularity is near’ predicts that within decades humans will have the knowledge to read minds.

Should we be concerned?

Probably yes!

Because of the speed at which ideas can be transmitted and begin to colonise a person, or group of people’s minds is getting faster (and in many ways easier.)

As Winston Churchill famously said:

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

Intelligence is no defense against an idea you already accept, or are biased to accept as true.

If you’ve been around NLP and personal development for a while you’ll have heard tons about beliefs, belief systems and so on.

None of these are real.

Attitudes, beliefs, belief systems are cognitive distinctions used to describe generalisations or over generalisations about how things work.

They are abstractions from the underlying process and primary experiences, upon which certain thoughts were connected up.

A belief is a set of conclusions that has been reached or accepted as the result of a cognitive process. Beliefs are often an over generalisations of an experience that a person accepts at ‘truth.’

However a big difference between a fact and belief is a fact can be demonstrated or tested.

While a belief can’t be or hasn’t been tested.

So much of what we believe, we do so because we accept what we see, what we hear and of course, what we feel without every questioning. Ever testing.I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who once said:

“Things quoted on the Internet are not always accurate.”

He was right. ;)

But it’s not just the web, it’s all media. Every speaker, every source can be wrong.

Much of the time when we ‘tune in’, our brain’s ‘checks out’.

Normally language doesn’t do us any help either, because with language we can be easily tricked.

With certain language patterns, such as “I am”, “If only…”, “It’s widely known” etc., we so easily dupe ourselves.

Language allows us to create reality tunnels.

More often that not, when this happens we (the creators or consumers of it) are BLIND to it.

We literally don't realise we made (or accepted) an evaluation, we act as if we have complete perception on a situation and we fail to check with the 'outside world' if a given statement has solid foundation in accuracy and fact.

The dumbing virus has caught us.

It’s not long then before it is believed. Duplicated, paid forward and of course - reaffirmed.

In many cases we go on to scare ourselves or paint ourselves into a corner.

Or infect others.

How do you stay out of the trap?

Share this article: