Having waited so long, I think it is apparent that Chrollo is absent today, so I’ll be running the thread instead. IIRC from last time, he concluded with his wish of towards the creation of a whole new way of being. And so on that note I have a few aspects of Snow Crash that I wanted to discuss. I can direct us back to them if I have to, but this story tree has enough branches that I think it might be best if I run through it once first as it is told before we start trying to pick it apart.
Obviously the most interesting aspect of this is the Asherah virus, but it is quite the oddity. This virus is spread via both biological and linguistic mediums. This makes it a little tricky to keep a handle on. Especially because it emerges in sumerian culture where a significant separation of religion, magic, medicine & aesthetics is impossible without falling victim to some serious distortions in perception*. P.211 So please try to keep in mind that the virus is our focus here as we go through it. I promise I am trying to both minimize time jumps and keep it as bare bones as possible. If im saying it, i think its important, okay?
First the sciencentric tone of the narrative is worth addressing. They acknowledge attempting to bring the more mystical elements down into a more scientific and “possible” way of being understood. Though Juanita calls the most attention to this with her defense of catholicism and the religious in general. Saying something akin to it having a reputation amongst the educated as being for the ignorant because what most experience in church is a surface level practice of pontification, rather than a discussion of the doctrine and beliefs.
And so the story begins…
Hiro protagonist, the protagonist resides in a hyper capitalized world while being employed as a pizza delivery boy for the mafia. Not all that strange, as this narrative has entered into an almost maximus state of governmental atrophy. Inducing a situation where every franchise operation has to either hire out a private security force or maintain their own, as is the case for all the most powerful NGOs. Hiro, who might describe himself as the kind of guy whose presence has the weight of a million bucks bagged in nickles is promptly liquidated from his position in the mafia's elite pizza delivery core after dumping his car in a pool cutting through a yard in an attempt to drop off the merchandise in 30 minutes or less. Forcing him back into the life of a freelance hacker, which as one of the main developers of the metaverse (which exists almost exclusively as a replacement for the previously flat internet), he is uniquely overqualified for.
It is in the metaverse that we encounter the first, or maybe the last, iteration of the Asherah virus. Here it manifests as a cyber drug that is only capable of frying a hacker’s brain, visually dosing them with symbolic representations of machine code resulting in their organics circuiting. This popper as VR info bomb, as well as its material equivalent, is distributed by the Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates Pentacostal Church franchise. Though the origins of the virus date about as far back as you can go. Emerging as a metavirus that either bubbles out of the sea of biological information in a complex system, or arrives from space via comet, raido wave etc. In any case, this metavirus is the stimulant to civilization by generating various behaviors to emerge and be carried out in repetition. These behaviors were coined by the sumerians as me, and are essentially a series of instructions for a human to carry out. Instructions are then distributed around whichever city by the local En, an individual who could be tenuously equated to a local priest King, from their location in the Ziggurat which lay at its center.
Numerous records exist of scribes extolling the merits of their city over others, justifying it with regards to the superior qualities of their me. As such, the water deity Enki is recounted as the greatest En for his creation of the best me. Enki was the Summerian god of wisdom, perhaps better understood as the lord of how to do things, or one who can create solutions to impossible problems P.256. Described as an expert in incantations, ‘’word rich’’ and master of all the right commands. In many creation myths, to name something is to create it, to cut if or separate same root as science and scythe it from the background and bring it into being. And so Enki was special because he could create new ‘’me’’. Today, it's rare that names or speech would be seen as anything magical, but saying a name not only evokes it by callings its conception to mind, it decidedly creates that conception in a way that can be communicatively be referred to. Though they are gesturing at something a little more suggestive read commanding. Name shubs which seems to differ from me only in that they must be created and me can spawn randomly* are fictions which make themselves real, me, which the book compares to programs being enacted by the metaverse. The metaverse in this sense is an enormous name shub constantly realizing itself across the network. Following this, myths from Sumeria are of a different nature than those of the greeks or egyptians. They lack in large what we would consider a narrative structure, and are more similar to a list of instructions as events. This is perhaps less odd in light of the fact that the Sumerian word for mind happens to be the same as their word for ear. To hear something was to think it, and to be given instructions was to enact them. Mythologised instructions for baking bread, laying bricks, sowing and reaping fields. All of which in conglomeration is compared to an operating system for their society.
For these reasons Hiro pegs Enki as one of the first sentient Human being, able to issue commands to be followed. A fella with a real knack for coining a phrase. Having no one to interact with causes Enki immense loneliness which motivates him to create the “name shub of Enki”. A self fulfilling fiction which bricks anything trying to run on Sumerian. This forces everyone to think, adapt, and change. A blossoming of thousands of languages and the beginning of languages diverging over space and time.
Synonymous with the biblical babble, the confusion of tongues. It’s a misconception that god knocked down the tower. Rather he confused their speech so they could not continue its construction. another of the many myths of a fall from paradise of which there are many. This one as the Nameshub of Enki reads