The Mechanics and History of Asherah: Snow Crash re-organized
Being cheifly a consideration and explanation of the Asherah virus within Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The author shall provide an analysis and consideration of the virus’ behaviour, its history external to the narrative of Snow Crash, and the biological implications of such an organism.
While I think it may be unnecessary to state at this juncture, this analysis will certainly contain spoilers. If you want to maintain the suspense of the book, I would suggest you come back to this essay at some future juncture.
Introduction
Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is one of the most revered works within the post-cyberpunk sub-genre of science fiction. Dating from 1992 and set in a hyper-commercial dystopia, the book weaves an intricate tale that turns on the presence of an ancient viral entity called “Asherah”.
Frustratingly for many readers, the recounting and the explanation of the mechanics and history of “Asherah” within the narrative fails to connect several key concepts. It is the goal of this document to clarify both the mechanics of Asherah: what the virus is, how it spreads, what changes it authors, etc. as well as the history of Asherah: what is the relationship of the virus to the development / sustenance of technologically-capable human societies.
Before delving into the work of this essay, I should like to make some cursory comments on the character roster / setting.
Characters
It is assumed by the author that it is unecessary to provide a complete character list. Some minor level of character enumeration is provided in the definitions document, but the names of the principal characters will be used without the assumption of obligation of introduction.
Setting
Snow Crash has three primary settings:
- The physical reality of Los Angeles at a dystopic point in the future
- The massive computer network (cyberspace) known an the Metaverse
- The library construct: a virtual library program complete with a librarian daemon (“helper”) where much of Hiro’s education in Sumerian society is given [1]
Citational Note
Throughought the discussion of this text I will provide page references for lookups. I am using the Bantam Trade Paperback Edition (2003).
Without further ado, let us explore the history and mechanics of Asherah.
Asherah / Snow Crash
What is Asherah
Juanita Marquez introduces the concept of Asherah conceptually as being: “Bad news. A metavirus, …. the atomic bomb of informational warfare — a virus that causes any system to infect itself with new viruses.”
Asherah is a metavirus that, once an organism is exposed to it, increases the liklihood that said organism will infect itself with other viruses. This behaviour is similar to HIV - a virus that reduces the ability of a healthy system to resist the deleterious effects of other viruses (informational entities). Once in the body, Asherah’s steroid-based structure allows it to penetrate the cells rapidly and alter the DNA of the cells (including neurons, the cells that create cognition) (250). The ability of Asherah to change the cognitive structures within the brain is significant within the narrative of Snow Crash.
How is Asherah transmitted?
Asherah is transmitted through two paths:
- Biologically through tainted bodily fluids: sexually, via mother’s milk, or via the street-drug “Snow Crash”
- Informationally through the Snow Crash digital virus
Juanita explains that the street drug Snow Crash, the biological conduit for the Asherah virus, is “chemically processed blood serum … [made to] look like a drug and feel like a drug so that people will want to take it…[It’s] just another way of spreading the [Asherah] infection.
This drug, in addition to run-of-the-mill drug dealers is also distributed through a religious franchise, “Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates” who offers this sinister draught in the Kool-Aid (the beverage of choice of religious fanatics).
It is worth pausing, at this moment, to imagine the sheer scale of the infected at this point. The religious cult / community of the Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates, most street-drug users, and the children or sexual partners of either of these parties. It is also worth noting that the infected are not above forcibly introducing the Asherah virus into the unwilling when directed so to do.
…the High Priest, is holding a small hing in one hand that is unusually warm. In the infrared, she can see …a brilliant glossy red thing, a shaft of a ruby… It’s a hypodermic needle. It’s full of red fluid. Under infrared, it shows up warm. It’s fresh blood.
What is unique to Asherah as a biological virus is that it has a digital correlate. As far as the characters in Snow Crash know, it is unique in this capacity.
The obvious ancillary question to is ask where this unique informational virus came from. Regrettably neither Stephenson nor Hiro offer a satisfactory explanation as to where this comes from[2]. Hiro doesn’t seem particularly bothered by not knowing the source and suggests by way of dismissal that it may have been found in outer space via some radio telescope.
Throughout the remainder of this essay, when I refer to “Asherah” the reader may understand that as Asherah-as-implanted-by-virological-spread or Asherah-as-implated-by-informational-spread (that is to say, by having been exposed to the Snow Crash virus).
What is the primary effect of Asherah
Asherah penetrates the walls of brain cells and goes to the nucleus where the DNA is stored… All steroids - artificial hormones - share the same basic structure, a ring of seventeen atoms that acts like a magic key that allows them to pass through cell walls. That’s why steroids are such powerful substances when they are unleashed in the human body. They can go deep inside the cell, into the nucleus, and actually change the way the cell functions (239).
What is the net effect of Asherah’s changes to DNA?
Asherah re-writes some of the primitive software functions of the human brain making it possible for the infected to be controlled by nam-shubs: a Sumerian word that means “incantation”; “speech with magical force” (211).
When infected with Asherah, the individual, upon hearing nam-shubs: “commands” in Sumerian, the ur-language, “the tongue of the ancestors of all magicians, who are thought to have descended from one particular tribe. (206)” will obey. Furthermore systems outside his realm of conscious control i.e. pure biological functions / autonomic function will obey.
The following of nam-shubs was not inherently evil in Sumerian society. Following me was the way society functioned at that time. An individual would go to the local en, get the me for baking bread, process it, and then perform the appointed task (395). This behavior only seems sinister in the mind of the modern.
The more me a city-state possessed, the more pride the citizens seem to have felt about their town. This results in a sorty of civic pride boosterism (“we have the me of princeship and excellent warfare making!”).
How is Asherah / Snow Crash Lethal?
First and foremost Asherah itself is not lethal - just as HIV itself is not inherently lethal. Asherah simply provides an window for an opportunistic attacker to kill the host.
Asherah is meant to prepare the infected for receiving me instruction. It would be quite foolish to immediately thereafter kill the freshly-prepared target. Asherah merely re-wires the neural chemistry such that the infected is capable of “running” me and/or falling under the influence of nam-shubs. Additionally, biological Snow Crash (the street drug) is not lethal, it is merely a means for distributing the Asherah virus. Being given a fresh shot of tainted blood is not lethal.
Only informational / digital Snow Crash is inherently lethal.
The ambitions of the villain of Snow Crash, L. Bob Rife, are threatened by the hacker-class and thus informational Asherah is partnered with a mental death nam-shub: collectively they are informational Snow Crash.
The reader is first witness to the lethal effects of this pairing in the Black Sun, the high hacker’s hangout of the Metaverse. Da5id is given a program that exerts two behaviours:
- Feeds oral data into his ear:
The Brandy leans forward, beckoning Da5id toward her. Da5id leans into her face, grinning broadly. She puts her crude, ruby-red lips up by his ear and mumblels something that Hiro can’t hear.
- Displays a nam-shub that erases the mental capacity of the listener
She’s unrolling [ a scroll ] right in fronrt of Da5id’s face, spreading it apart like a flat two-dimensional screen in front of his eyes.
We’re also led to believe that something unique happens to the mind of a hacker, due to their reality-structuring trade, their minds have an added philia with “deep structures.” I believe we are to take it that if the casual Metaverse user were to be exposed to informational Snow Crash, they might get away unscathed. [2.5]
For Da5id, however, his “deep structure”-oriented ( a result of years of hacking code in the Metaverse) mind is exposed to Asherah and primed to receive me. Moments later the lethal payload reaches critical mass and, thanks to his “deep structure” orientation, is able to turn his mental faculties to naught.
Asherah / Snow Crash In Historical Context
I shall now attempt to describe Asherah within the context of the evolution of life in the universe and the development of meaningful civilization. While the initial backstory is not explained by Snow Crash, I believe my conjecture presents no contradiction / conflict with Stephenson’s historical characterization of the interaction between human society and Asherah.
Begin speculation
Assume that the function of the metavirus is to produce civilized, technologically-advanced, robust intelligence. It is my interpretation that Asherah is a tool and a failsafe to encourage this mission.
Life is begun by the inital magic of the metavirus. Over time simple unicellular organisms evolved into primitive man. At some point the metavirus begins creating new biological viruses to strengthen natural selection’s production of robust organisms. Weak organisms die off until a hearty organism remains. [2]
The day these biological viruses started being produced by the metavirus and taking out the life forms is recorded in mythological history as a fall from grace, or the end of a golden age (232), man stopped living hundreds of years, became infirm, etc.
Provided life remains over from the biological trial by fire, civilization needs to be built. It has long been a problem that the mentally inadept have had numerical superiority over the visionary and intelligent few. It is to serve those visionaries (i.e. the most intelligent, capable, technology-producing individuals within the society, the ens) that Asherah exists. The constructors of civilization need the brute manpower of the masses. Asherah turns the listener into an organic automoton capable of executing tasks at the behest of an “orchestrator.” These primitive tasks are encoded in simple “programs” called me. The orchestrator / distributor and thus programmer of the society is a local wise-man, king, demigod: the en. [[Moses?]]
In exchange for this manpower, these visionaries, the ens of their respective communities, organize economies, governments and societies. They make the life experience of the organic resources better, more regular and slightly less nasty, brutish, and short. [3]
Asherah also serves as a backstop against total recidivism in the case of catastrophe. Imagine a dromatic population reduction by natural disaster. Perhaps the stress in mothers would trigger a newborn to have aptitude with nam-shubs. With Asherah still afoot, this resurfaced en could more quickly redirect the carriers to go back into “automaton mode” and get to the business of attempting to reconstruct civilization.
This en could stop petty squabbles over resources. With a few hundred trumpets and the right syllables he could immobilize attacking armies, move them into chaos and start the long process of civilizing again.
The breaking away from Asherah: The Birth of Reason
The power of Asherah is limited, by design, and after helping advance the visionary ens’ agenda, must be discarded like the ladder proposed by Wittgenstein at the end of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The first en to realize that utilization of the Asherah-based influence was as much a limitation to the development of his civilization as it was a boon was a Sumerian personage / god / demigod called Enki, the en of Eridu.
Enki is recorded in Sumerian mythology as the god of wisdom, but not the wisdom of an old man. He has the knoweledge of how to do things (in Greek craft, or techne). As en of Eridu he possessed, maintained, and even learned to develop new me. Due to his great wisdom his city was extolled. Ultimately Enki concluded that his me-based civilization had accomplished all it could, or that it was in a rut, and he devised a way to turn the biopower from merely organic automata into fully-aware humans.
Enki developed a nam-shub that served as the obliterator of the ability to understand nam-shubs or me. It was this nam-shub that caused the linguistic death of Sumerian: the nam-shub of Enki. It is for this reason that Sumerian writing has no decendednts (210-211). The dramatic tale of Enki’s destruction of this comprehension is recounted in pages 216-217. This event is stored in the Hebrew as The Tower of Babel event.
The en had his work cut out for him though, as he no longer possessed the means to directly control individuals by the force of his Sumerian nam-shubs he had to appeal to them by other means: communication, writing, as well as advanced social organizational activities: warfare, commerce, economic interest[3]. His sons, Marduk and Hammurabi attempted to help transition the civilization into a world of behavior based on rule of law (398-399).
Another nominee as a leader in the post-Asherah world who had to lead unruly masses would be Moses. Consider the endless recidivisism of the freed Israelites and how many times Yahweh punished them for their going astray.
Yet not all of the brute manpower offered to the ens was benefitted by the end of the reign of Asherah. The priestly (literate) class suffered particularly. A Sumerian scribe even left a record of his shock and horror as to his life post exposure to Enki’s nam-shub on pages 218-9. Hiro points out, when asked about the survivorship rate of the non-adapting of those who could not evolve to the post-me society, that they probably died. An evolutionary gambit was laid down: Evolve new, richer languages and models of social control, or be conquered, or die [4].
An important effect of the Babel incident is that it forced humans to develop artificial languages: Hebrew, Dutch, Esperanto, to refer to their experience and the things around them. They learned arbitrary signs that mapped to the signifieds of their experience (de Saussure). Thus, when they spoke to their offspring in this artificial language, the children’s minds were patterend in such a way that they could not acquire the ability to understand Sumerian. Provided this society kept any outside influences out, they could evolve free from Asherah and me.
Hiro describes this in the metaphor of server “firmware”. A server comes shipped from the factory with a blank-slate firmware. Just once, and only once, a certain set of behaviors can be programmed into this firmware, obliterating the ability of other behaviours ever to be encoded therein.
Consider the case of a Sumerian-Asherah child. The first syllables are the falabala phonemes associated with Sumerian. His mind can be controlled by Sumerian nam-shubs and he shall live out his live as an automaton, slave to the instructions of the en.
Consider the inverse, and this serves as a pleasant segueway to the next section, an Israelite child. His firmware is blank during the essential language-acquisitive window. His phonemes are aleph and bet, his ability to be controlled by the Sumerian nam-shubs is obliterated. He shall be forced to interact in Hebrew with his Hebrew-speaking tribe.
This view is supported by the Librarian who asserts that without Asherah, certain blocks of Sumerian text cannot be understood. The characters are legible and well-understood, but the brain receives no imprint (251). The Librarian adds that Sumerian myths reflect an entirely different consciousness from the modern’s (251) To understand some Sumerian content you must either have a Sumerian-patterned firmware, or be under the influence of Asherah.
Thus a society of automata are pitted against a society of rationality. It is this war for the independent control of one’s mental apparatus that marks the next phase of evolution of human civilization. Just as learning the arbitrary mapping between signs and their signifieds marks the transition away from the ur-language and to a rational language, learning the arbitrary mapping of an individual to his society is the hallmark of a free society - the society that can engage in substantial commercial enterprise, and large-scale warfare.
Societies that could evolve non-centralized means of control, but that could achieve goals in spite of free will were more ready to advance, grow, distribute labor, and evolve the weaponry and craft succiently stated as guns, germs, and steel.
Social Tension between Asherah-bound societies / Free Societies
Many tribes of the fertile crescent heard the nam-shub of Enki, but many others did not. Much like the competition between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man, Neanderthal would, with his more developed reasoning capacity, develop more sophisticated tools wherewith to subdue the threat to resources and territory posed by his less-developed cribmate in Natural Selection’s crucible.
Asherah-freed tribes knew of the presence of Asherah, and knew the threat of foreign ens who could effectively conquer their tribes with but a word and a virus. This is an extra lash on the back of the stubborn beast of man to not slip-back into the Asherah society. One of the “informationally hygenic” tribes were the Israelites. Their rituals and mores last until today telling us how they broke away from Asherah re-infection. I shall address several aniseptic behaviours exhibited by the Israelites.
The freed societies stayed pure by two key techniques:
- Keeping biologically hygenic (avoiding the Asherah virus within a “clean” community)
- Patterning the human firmware in such a way that the understanding of artificial language
Stephenson uses the Israelites and Hebrew as the choice example. I will detail several behaviours that fall into these two categories and helped the Hebrews maintain their freedom from the history of Asherah.
The Torah as Informational Vaccine
Inclusive in the obligation of Israelite leadership to copy the Torah by hand. This serves several function: it asserts the primacy to artificial language and serves as a measuring stick to make sure that the youngest members of the society have been patterned in the artificial language and not enslaving language of the nam-shub.
The “tell two friends” aspect of this commandment puts Hiro to considering the Torah, therefore to also be a virus. Hiro’s interlocutor, the Librarian, states that another researcher considered this a benign virus, a vaccine. This is an example of informational hygine against the slovenly confusion of Asherah(230).
Blood Purity of the Israelites
Few other religions have put such an emphasis on genealogy as the Jews. The strong insistence on the identification of a child’s mother and father are rarely as culturally strong as in Judean culture.
The Jewish insistence of not allowing foreign tribal individuals (especially women) to enter is underscored in countless allegories within thhe Torah. The story of Samson and Delilah is an admonishment of “Thou Shalt Not Mate with Foreign Tribal Women.” Considering that her influence led Samson do destroy that most sacred of buildings within the Jewish culture, the temple, it could hardly be more cautionary. Stick with the people of the Torah, the story says, and life goes better.
It is through these measures that the Jewish civilization was able to move beyond the limits of the Asherah-controlled society.
History after the nam-shub of Enki
Stephenson cites a number of occasions where societies attempted to stay free of Asherah and evil ens who would seek power based on this infection. In the plot dynamic we hear of Asherah-enslaved rabbis attempting to consolidate power (Pharisees or Sadducees), Asherah-carrying Christians turning Jesus’ transcendental messages into written law (evokative of en if not nam-shubs by another name).
It is merelly yet another power-hungry being who serves as the villain of Snow Crash, L. Bob Rife.
Ultimately Stephenson’s model of human liberty and social expansion can be seen echoed in de Saussure’s conception of language. In a developend language signs: alpha, bet, gamma, delta, etc. map to sounds arnd those sounds have no inherent mening. There are merely phonemes from which words are constructed by voluntary consensus. Free-will societies, the intelligent, technologically advanced societies desired (for what reason, we know not) by the metavirus operate similarly. There is no forced bonding between the individual and the desire of the leader. Rather these associations must be made by consensus of aims and social contract.
Conclusion
Thus concludes my explication of the mechanics and history of Asherah. Asherah is a virus that serves to help a few control the many and organize social development. While this virus is a powerful tool, it can maintain the societies as infants and keep them fgrom achieving their full potential. Once societies break free from authoritarianism, from the control of me and Asherah, they must fight to retain their freedom. They must not turn over their hard-won right to make decisions to anyone else.
…for the metavirus’ next gambit is just around the corner.
Footnotes
[1]:
It is an interesting stylistic note that Stephenson’s hallmark edrudition on topics scientific invites him to give lectures in the middle of his novels.
The reader of Stephenson will recall that Crytponomicon opens up with a math lesson in differential equations and that The Baroque Cycle has frequently grants the characters a stage upon which they, like de Sade’s cardboard cutouts, break the fourth wall and educate the reader so that he will be better able to appreciate the intricacies of the action.
Stephenson, perhaps unsure of himself as a writer at this early point in his career introduces the conceit of a librarian who will tutor both the reader and Hiro.
[2]: It’s understandable that Stephenson does not want to open up an infinite regress into “where did intelligent life” start. “What begat Asherah?” The metavirus. “What begat the metavirus” ….???…. Either Stephenson must give an accounting (“The metavirus is an offshoot of a program run by aliens to create intelligence” or “Act of God” etc.) OR he must make the question uninteresting. He does the latter. Stephenson’s formulation is that Asherah may be an effect of another virus (“the metavirus”) that, much like natural selection, is an integral part of “how life operates”. That is, while we can speculate as to an origin, it’s really an integral / self-evident part of the operation of or experience that to to say “where did it come from” invites produces no real enlightenment. Much like anthropic principles, by the fact that humans are here, we must not be allowed to postulate the mechanics of the such that it would preclude the existence of human life. I find this very similar to the strategy employed by Hegel in his presentation of The Phenomenology of Sprit. While it may be the case that in a Kantian world the “thing-as-it-is” may be a square and the “thing as we experience it” is a circle, and thus thereby the object is truly a square; given that we can’t experience the “thing-as-it-is” let’s stop worrying about it and merely discuss what can be observed and what is necessary to be for us to even have the conversation.
In meatspace, the reality outside the Metaverse, the Asherah-infected could theoretically be exposed to this mind-erasing nam-shub with the same effect. This fact could lead many readers to imagine the thought experiment where Asherah-infected masses are watching the news when suddenly the Snow Crash nam-shub is issued. Would they be cooked? I don’t think that this question can clearly be resolved from within Snow Crash as we don’t know how sensational output are handled via the devices used to plug into the Metaverse. Is it really “hearing” if it’s in cyberspace? Is it really “seeing”? Furthermore the average citizen lacks the mental conditioning for having affiliation with the deep structures. I think that Stephenson’s answer would be no
[3]: I’m put in mind of Ayn Rand who said: “Beware the man who tells you that money is evil, for his next tool for controlling you is at the end of a gun.”
This makes an interesting thread between Snow Crash and The Baroque Cycle - essentially a study of the transformative power of “The System of the World”: The global marketplace and its ability to do away with many ills: slavery chief among them.
[4]: Death was certain for some, especially those that languished praying for Enki to set things backwards. Stephenson’s Shaftoe speaks to the reader with his gruff admonishment: Show some fucking adaptability!
One should keep in mind the story of the slight-of-hand artist Moses who, after having received the best education in the ancient world proceeded to baffle recently-freed slaves with smoke and magic and fed them a story about a tribal identity anchored around singular God so as to keep them in line with doing the work associated with founding of his dynastic ambitions. How much easier would his task have been had he been able to unleash Asherah upon the rebellious souls who would craft golden idols in his absence.
