1/3 E, Ideas & Memetics ⬅ § ➡ In The Sel fi sh Gene , Richard Dawkins proposed the meme as a unit of cultural propagation. Among white nationalists, the concept was fi rst popularized through Curtis Yarvin, and today it is basic theory. But the theory is controversial: some thinkers argue that the gene-meme analogy is simplistic, and that memes do not reproduce in the way that organisms actually do. Richard Dawkins himself appeared to distance himself from the concept, issuing caveats about how far or how literally the analogy should be taken. And while I don't actually want to spend time dissecting all of the criticisms, I would like to establish the philosophy. Is it rational to say that ideas, at the very least, behave like physical objects? Do they "adapt," do they "reproduce," do they "use strategies?" Putting aside how it actually works, is it rational to treat it as a "thing" "that works?" What is an idea anyways? Can it even be de fi ned? Ideas , whatever those are, do seem to follow an evolutionary course. For example, in "The Meta Cult," Ryan Faulk describes how leftist thinking 'evolved' over time: And I'll deliver the punchline here: anything that deviates from the Meta Cult on race is Nazi. And I would say that the Meta Cult today, it takes various forms: in the Middle Ages it was centered around Catholicism and the Pope, and arguably it had other transformations at other times in history -- at one point in history it was about the working class and property and communism and stuff, and today it's a race cult. And I can see that pattern; I intuit precisely what he's talking about. The style of the politics, the grievances, the art. And, the kinds of people who tend get involved. And, you can see how this "memeplex," this ideology-thing might "utilize strategies" by which it captures demographics. Ryan continues: In reality, these idea men, the Meta Cult, they need a real physical people to piggyback on. For example, Bolshevism had to piggyback on the Russians; Islam had to piggyback on the Arabs; Christianity worked through the Western Roman Empire and then what came to become Western Europe. From these bases the ideas spread, but you have to have a real physical base. And in the U.S. it's important to see that you have a meta cult right now, but it doesn't have a name. "Liberal," "leftist," these aren't real names these are attempts at a name. And this meta cult in America, this Ameri-cult! piggybacks on blacks and to a lesser degree on Amerindians as their base. Without them, the actual number of true Meta Cultists could never carry the day, anywhere, ever. They require some people to piggyback off of in order to win. They always have to piggyback onto some sort of oppositional nationalism. This is why in the Soviet Union, you had the regime sometimes acting in line with whatever they thought Marxism was this week, but also they would sometimes just bellicosely advance Russia's interests in particular. China would sometimes do things to advance Maoist communism pure and simple, but also things speci fi cally for Chinese interests. 2/3 Islam is a religion sure, but it's also kind of a race, it's also kind of what Arabs are. It's also Arab nationalism but also a religious thing. The word Allah ? That's just the Arab word for God . So why do English-speaking Muslims say Allah ? Because it's [sic] to become a Muslim is to kind of submit to Arab nationalism, but also a [sic] anti-European ideal. It is a religion in one sense true, but it's also a kind of primal treason of your own kith and kin as well. Marxism is hard to understand whereas "YEAH RUSSIA," that's much easier to understand. It's so much easier to just say "Russia is Marxism" than to teach everyone Marx. It's so much easier to say "Arab is Islam" than to teach everyone Islam. And this is why Scientology can never win. What nation is Scientology trying to piggyback off of? They have no national base. In a casual sense, this makes sense. These narratives seem to have a "head" by which the ideological architecture is dispersed. It's typically a small number of committed activists. They develop the basic integrity, the structure of the web -- and the exterior nodes, the normies who "get the gist" of whatever autism these activists are talking about, those people operate society in roughly the parameters demanded of them. And so they organize society in a way that is bene fi cial to the head, providing muscle, capital, and impressionable new recruits (their children). The base feeding the superstructure, and the superstructure outlining the base. But again, what are we talking about here? One problem with the word idea is that it encompasses both objects and concepts. For example, the idea of cloudy refers to a concept, and the idea of clouds refers to physical objects. Even more confusing is the fact that ideas do not refer to anything that is outside the brain. We wouldn't call the chair that is in front of us "an idea," but we would call the chair that is in our imagination "an idea." But i ‐ dea also has nothing to do with existence. Sure, the idea of a cloud does not exist (as it does not have location), nor does cloudy (as concepts do not exist). So it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that idea refers to that which does not exist. But this is really the word imaginary , or non-existent . We are talking about a thing -- not an adjective, and not a relationship. There is also the problem of rei fi cation. If an idea is a concept, then it makes no sense to say that it can "spread" or "evolve" or "adapt to an environment," or "use strategies" to "infect" our minds. So the virus analogy cannot work. It is a nonstarter, a nonsensical premise. So, what if this word does not refer to a concept? Ideas are physical objects. They are things inside of the brain. They have to be; there is no other way around this. If Man A tells Man B about the problems of industrial society, Man B may decide to send a nail bomb through the postal service. Obviously some physical change has taken place in Man B. Either you throw memetics away, and try to philosophize this differently, or you accept the fact that this "thing" we've been talking about REALLY IS a thing. From a physical perspective, memetics is rather simple. There is the engram or meme , which can be described as a con fi guration of matter that encodes for a piece of media. And then there is the meme seed . The meme seed is the engram in its transportive form. For instance, the spoken word re-shapes the air and mails it towards the recipient. Other examples would include writing, pictures, currency, computer data, hand signs, and braille. 3/3 Genes are long and complicated sequences -- their transportation is a formal affair. But memes have incredibly simple instructions -- perhaps a few syllables, or a single, interesting facial cue. This is because ideas tweak our shared priors: one little change reorganizes the collage of objects that make up our thinking. The seed arrives, the engram is made, and every object around it is changed forever. Ideas reproduce both sexually and asexually. In the asexual sense, they may be copied faithfully as they travel from A to C. Mutations in this context arise from a game of telephone, where the ideas are misinterpreted. In the sexual sense, they may be combined with other ideas to produce a modi fi cation. It is in the mind where the fi tness of the idea is truly tested. The mind plays games to see if it is rational, or interesting, or true. It determines whether it is worthy of consideration, whether it should be shared with other people, or pushed to the back, forgotten. Memories require upkeep to maintain their shape, in the way that life forms must eat or drink or sleep. For an engram, that upkeep is recollection. Since ideas can be physically imagined, it is possible that entire ideologies could be visually dissected, perhaps using mind maps or some other cute, visual shorthand. In this way (laid out), they could be easier to tamper with. It's easier to cure a virus when you can actually see the germs. This physicality is also important to Virtuosity. It proves that intellectualizing is, in fact, a form of activism. Sharing your thoughts quite literally changes the world in a physical way. It moves objects around all over the globe, shifting the patterns of the world's ecology. In that sense, it is power. ⬅ § ➡