The Fore people of New Guinea once suffered from a strange neurological disease, ending in dementia and death, known as kuru. It was caused by an infectious protein called a prion, which entered their brains after they indulged in funerary cannibalism.
It sometimes seems to me that a metaphorical prion, that of wokeness (to use a hackneyed term), has entered the minds of the intelligentsia of the West. Of course, no analogy is exact: one of the symptoms of kuru was outbursts of uncontrolled laughter, and if there is one symptom those infected with the prion of wokeness do not suffer from, it is laughter, uncontrolled or otherwise.
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