Planet
Considerations on the Gaian superorganism, its tissues and environment.
the Matrix also proposed the idea that humans are a virus. The “superorganism” model of humans / our genome proposes a role of viruses. Modern vaccine sanity argues for controlled exposure to viruses. I think I could make other parables. Now gene therapy (‘future best medicine’) I wonder if humans have been exposing themselves to virii for so long that our mechanism is becoming indistinguishable from a virus.
In a related vein, there are strains of memetics / lore that speak about an engineered virus designed to destroy or broadly restructure society. These stories verge from the real-conspiracy, to movies about zombies, X-Files, and bioweapons. The consistent subtext is of the use of viruses to change people and remove those that will not change. Even the nuclear-doomsday scenario bears similarity in the ‘resetting of the world.’