From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 00:06:57 MST
[Joe Dees] I WILL tell you that subsequent mutations of the original
monotheistic meme have evolved into increasingly violent and virulent forms,
and the Islamic variant has proven to be by far the most resistant to the
moderating forces of democracy, secularism, egalitarianism and modernity.
[Hermit] What you (i.e. Joe) appear to be doing currently, is to propose
that the meme defines the environment. I suspect that you are granting a
meme more power than any has demonstrated to date and which breaks the
genetic origin of the analogy. Reaching back to the Darwinistic evolutionary
pattern, a meme does not define its environment, but rather, is defined by
it. When the meme is harmful to its carriers, it will adapt or die out for
want of carriers. The environment determines the alleles - not vice versa.
[Hermit] If I dig back into history, to find Christian groups at comparable
stages of development to most modern Muslim communities, I'd suggest that
the monotheism of Martin Luther was far worse than that of most Muslims viz.
[url=http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html]"The
Jews and Their Lies", Martin Luther, 1543[/url] as were many of the popes.
viz e.g. [url=http://www2.prestel.co.uk/littleton/jminquis.htm]The
Inquisition, J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia[/url]. I use these
examples because their twelfth to sixteenth century societies map reasonably
well in terms of income distribution, individual economic clout, learning
and political structure to that of most current Muslim (and, for that
matter, Hindu) societies.
[Hermit] My argument is that Christianity was eventually transformed by its
believers from a brutal and murderous UTism (viz the Cathars and
Albigensians) into something superficially gentler, only when its tenets
came into opposition with its supporters economic, social, and political
activity - and to an extent depended upon their ability to project military
capability. In other words, the Christian monotheistic meme was, to an
extent at least, modified by its environment, and as the environment grew
more humane, so it too grew more humane or would have been extinguished.
[Hermit] In the same way, the brutal economic realities, worse political
systems and dehumanizing societies modify the Islamic meme, to make it far
more virulent than it has been in other times (e.g. Castile or even in the
US). Either way, the meme is defined by the environment.
[Hermit] As we (the West) have been a major factor in ensuring that the
economic, social and political systems of Islamic nations match that which
suits us, the resulting memeplex is, to an equal extent, our responsibility.
We have played the role of an evolutionary force. The results were
predictable. We now have to deal with a stronger meme than when we began -
and opposition to that meme, or an internally driven selection program (as
in a revolution), will make it stronger yet.
[Hermit] The US appears to me to be throwing the competing and antagonistic
Christian memeplex up against Islam - which ultimately will probably make
both worse.
[Hermit] I would have suggested that the correct answer is to prevent
revolution (which will foster absolutism), encourage growth and to place
antibiotic "guard bands" around those memepools, which will lead to the
eventual dominance of the gentler strains of the memeplex through internal
adaptation and selection. The route to doing this effectively is to make the
world a somewhat kinder gentler place by implementing a long term program of
technological aid and exchange, which will force the development of the kind
of education and society in which any theist religion will eventually become
irrelevant. As has happened in Europe and will happen in the US.
Regards
Hermit
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