> >Beware. Memetic AIDS.
>
> This is actually what I was thinking, but I didn't want to say that. Some
> people find the "infection" metaphore nasty enough as it is.
>
> The thing is, many "immune systems" are different -- i.e. Objectivism as
> opposed to, say, Catholicism. I'm not sure there's a memetic AIDS capable
> of affecting the devout Catholic and the devout Wiccan in the same breath,
> as it were.
We would need to find "where" the immune system resides and attack that
instead of attacking the immune response. What triggers the memetic
immune system? Threat to the ego, of course. I think his may be why
processes that result in ego dissolution (Alternative Thought Processes,
Buddhism, etc.) leave one open to new ideas and new ways of seeing the
world afterward.
AIDS doesn't attack the white blood cells, per se. It attacks the
machinery that produces white blood cells. In the same way, Memetic AIDS
wouldn't need to disassemble the individual anti-memes (the part that will
very from a Catholic to a Wiccan), but rather "turn off" the part that
creates and activates the anti-memes. In other words, shut down the Ego.
-Prof. Tim