Pluribus II brings an upgrade to a post from a previous week. I shall repeat the first one as it was, and then there is a conclusion based on all nine episodes.

Pluribus I

Pluribus follows Albuquerque author Carol Sturka, who is one of only 13 people in the world immune to the effects of the “Joining”, an event in which an extraterrestrial virus transformed the rest of humanity into a peaceful and content hive mind known as the “Others”. The hive mind happily accommodates the wishes of those who remain unaffected, but admits that it will ultimately seek to assimilate them when it figures out how to do so. Carol is adamantly against their efforts as she searches for a way to reverse the Joining. (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia classifies this television series as post-apocalyptic science fiction.

While it can be understood at least partly as a post-apocalyptic, it is far from being science fiction.

Nothing post-apocalyptic there

Pluribus is post-apocalyptic as much as it was a novel in 1984, when Orwell published it in 1949. The novel, namely, describes a flourishing communist society already at that time. Orwell was a novelist with an astonishing insight into the ideological inner workings of communism. As a novelist, he was gifted enough to symbolize the rational analysis into a story that overwhelms your thoughts and emotions. With that, he surpassed many rational analytical works of the time and positioned himself beside Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.

Just as 1984 was a realistic, not post-apocalyptic story, so is Pluribus a precise description of the memetic reality we live in.

And here exactly lies the catch. While Orwell could not envisage the ideological upgrades of communism that do not rely on the Big Brother “somewhere behind”, Pluribus could and should take into account that the virus that affected the minds of all humans but 13 of them is not of genetic but of memetic origin.

A disclosure

I must disclose that I’m writing this post after seeing only two of the nine episodes. That I have an urge to write right after seeing only the smaller part of the story should tell you about the importance I see in this Apple production. I wonder if they were aware of the subversiveness of their endeavor. Please stay tuned, as I will provide updates regularly, and most certainly after I finish all nine of them.

The pandemic is already here!

Let me now state the central point of my message.

Pluribus is exactly what Orwell could not imagine, however, only if the virus is a memetic one.

At least at this stage, there is no human agent behind the cruel pacification of humans, and that is precisely what is going on in our present social reality. The spread of LGBT+, multiculturalism, globalism, WEF reset movement, the Muslimization of the Western world, climate change euphoria, and many other pandemic phenomena grow on an exponential basis not because of the power of agents behind, but because the memetic virus(es) gained sufficient momentum to replicate on their own using humans as their vehicles. They are already beyond the control of any human agency for some time, as with biological viruses, when an epidemic or pandemic emerges from sporadic infections.

The difference, though, between genetically driven viruses and memes is that the latter replicate with lower accuracy but are much faster. If we can prepare a flu vaccine months ahead of the predictable epidemic, we are already intoxicated when we recognize a memetic virus we are infected with. At the same time, the immunization memetic process takes much longer and is much harder to achieve than biological virus immunization.

To conclude the story at this stage:

1. Pluribus is a realistic artistic explication of the present state of at least Western society.
2. There are hints that the virus’s non-genetic basis will be revealed. At least I hope so.
3. I hope that the Latin motto “e pluribus unum” of the United States, as the reference of the title of the series, develops in the right direction.

Pluribus II

Evaluating Pluribus in comparison to the majority of mass-produced series and sequels that became a sort of TV-produced memetic drugs, at least one positive side protrudes: it does not follow the easy-going narrative that pleases an ordinary mind.

I have nothing against ordinary mind; on the contrary. However, it pleases me, in art at least, to submerge into a scattered, unbalanced, and frequently obnoxious story. The tempo of Pluribus is bipolar by any psychotherapeutic standard. KUDOS!

While Apple’s high-end production and acting are expected standards, another quality should be mentioned: the clever manipulation of archetypes. What we see, cleverly developed, is the regression of individualization of a subject from the perspectives of society and of two individuals. Those two individuals face their own earliest stages of life, when we as humans are still one with the uroboric mother, a mother goddess that provides safety at the cost of consciousness. The only two individuals who did not regress face the stage of human development (both on the social and individual levels) before an individual becomes a hero, before consciousness emerges. (Here I refer to C.G. Jung, obviously.) KUDOS!

However, there is one caveat that remains even after the ninth episode: the virus still seems biological. It might not be genetic; however, it is physical. Even if we forget the entirely unsubstantiated sequence where a young girl (one of the then remaining 13 normal people on Earth) gets transformed by the inhalation of a mysterious vapour (sorry guys, but that does not make sense from any point of the series!!!), the other option, that the “virus” is transported from another planet via the partiqular frequence, also belongs to traditional physicality. If the second season follows this path, I do not see any option for a story that would make sense.

To conclude the story at this stage:

1. Pluribus remains a realistic story of the present state of at least Western society. We live in a collectivist society; Pluribus only shows the consequences of this society.
2. Pluribus, unfortunately, missed the opportunity (so far) to place the virus in the memetic domain. The authors are obviously unaware of the theoretical work of Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), Susan Blackmore (The Meme Machine), Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained), and David Haig (From Darwin to Derrida), so they did not see the most obvious foundations ot their story.
3. So far, at least, the story supports”e pluribus unum” of the United States.

So, let’s wait for season II for a final verdict.